The Catholics Are Attacking... Already... Again

I love any excuse to embed one of my favorite old 415 Records songs-- my indie label in San Francisco-- "The Catholics Are Attacking" by the Pop'O'Pies. This time it has to do with a gaggle of right-wing bishops attacking Tim Kaine for not bucking under to their theocratic instincts and their bizarre interpretation of Jesus' religion as one where women are relegated to staying home, ignorant and pregnant. The Catholic Church should lose it's tax exempt status for attempting to round up votes for Trump by attacking Kaine on religious grounds.

FaithfulAmerica.org sounded the alarm:

Last night, America heard Senator Tim Kaine speak sincerely about how his Catholic faith has inspired his public service. But already, some Catholic church officials are attacking him.

While not mentioning Kaine's name, his hometown bishop used his selection as an occasion to issue a statement demanding that Catholic politicians obey the hierarchy's teaching on abortion.

Meanwhile, a Rhode Island bishop issued a statement explicitly questioned the authenticity of Kaine's faith, saying that he "has been widely identified as a Roman Catholic [but] his faith isn't central to his public, political life."

Finally, a high-ranking Catholic priest in Washington, DC was more blunt, tweeting: "Do us both a favor. Don't show up in my communion line."

This is exactly the kind of despicable rhetoric that Catholic bishops used to attack John Kerry and Joe Biden, and this year, with the stakes so high, we need to nip it in the bud.

The irony here, of course, is that Kaine is an anti-Choice Democrat who doesn't see eye-to-eye with Clinton on repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents Medicaid funds going towards abortions. Despite Hillary saying he would help her repeal the Hyde Amendment he told CNN (in the video below) that he has not changed his position in favor of the Hyde Amendment. NARAL called him out on it immediately, with this statement from Ilyse Hogue, president of the group:

"In this campaign, Hillary Clinton has broken new ground with her frank talk about the damaging effect of denying poor women basic reproductive healthcare. By doing so, Hillary continues to do what she has always done: fight to empower women and families and give us the tools we need to live healthy and secure lives.

"This is why Senator Kaine's statement earlier today that he opposes repealing the discriminatory Hyde amendment was deeply disappointing.

“Repealing the Hyde amendment and providing the full range of reproductive healthcare to low-income women is a top priority for NARAL. This is a principle embraced by the Democratic Party as a whole, and it was voted unanimously into the party platform that I personally worked to draft and pass.

“We appreciate Senator Kaine's commitment to upholding the nominee's position on this important issue, and we sincerely hope that he will continue to educate himself on what Hyde means to the most vulnerable women in this country and join us in fighting this injustice.

"We fully support Hillary Clinton in her commitment to repeal this law and as a champion for reproductive freedom. We will work every day to make sure that women and families are secure in this country by electing her President of the United States."

Didn't Hillary ask him when she was vetting him for the running mate slot? I guess not. Meanwhile, I can't wait to see how Trump tries to use this one against Kaine!

Herr Trumpf-- Vicar Of Christmas Trees, Scourge of The U.S. Constitution

When I woke up and switched on the TV this morning, the first thing I heard was the bratty voice of an newly empowered Marco Rubio cracking school yard jokes. "Donald Trump likes to sue people; he should sue whoever did that to his face." And there was something about a spray tan. But don't get distracted by the canned jokes about Herr-Force One that Rubio's comedy writer is giving him. Truth: Trumpf is an authoritarian and a fascist. He may seem like a harmless bag of wind and a buffoon but his ability to tap into a vein of Hate Talk Radio's ginned up tight-wing victimhood is a real danger to this country. Colin Taylor, writing for OccupyDemocrats over the weekend showed how effortlessly Herr Trump manipulates "the poorly educated." Trump's support base is more accurately described as "Life's Losers," the infuriated people-- enabled by opportunistic Republican strategists and Hate Talk Radio hosts shilling for ad dollars-- who modernity has left behind and who have no compunction about collapsing the entire system. You think Bernie is for revolution? Herr Trumpf's followers are ready for the reactionary backlash before the revolution even comes.

The video above shows exactly how he bonds with the imbecile: "We're going to say Merry Christmas now on Christmas." And the audience erupts. Encouraged by the reaction, he goes off: "We're going to start going to department stores and stores and you're going to see big beautiful signs that's gonna say 'Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday and we;re gonna have a big, big, big lotta fun. And we're gonna get rid of that. We're gonna get rid of that. That's one of the first things I wanna do."

Get rid of what? The Constitution? The separation of church and state? Taylor: "Overshadowed by the superficial media circus focused on Chris Christie’s endorsement of Trump at today’s rally in Fort Worth, Texas, the media missed an extremely alarming part of Donald Trump’s aimless and convoluted monologue. He took his pandering to evangelicals and religious extremists across the country to a new height by proposing to end the law that bans the participation of churches in American politics and to establish “the strongest Christian lobby” (as if the Republican Party isn’t one already), once again demonstrating a flagrant disregard for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It cements his campaign as a political movement tailored only to white Christians, callously disregarding all the millions of Americans who don’t fit into that demographic and wish to live their lives free of the moral judgement and puritanical rules of the religious extremists who now dominate the Republican Party."

At the rally, Trump brought out Pastor Robert Jeffers, who endorsed Trump and lauded his “pro-life” credibility (despite his long history of being pro-choice prior to this election). Jeffers, who happens to believe that the Pope is the “anti-Christ,” complained to Trump about the inability of churches to endorse candidates without losing their tax exemptions-- which Trump immediately said that he would change, implying that they would be allowed into politics while keeping their tax exempt status. Tax-exempt churches make a jaw-dropping $82 billion dollars a year, which is often used by hypocritical pastors to finance lavish lifestyles for themselves. Allowing churches into politics without losing their tax exemption would simply be pouring even more dark money into politics-- not to mention an outrageous violation of the Constitution, which would almost certainly be an impeachable offense.

It is extremely alarming how much power that Christian religious extremists have in this country. They are relentlessly pushing a puritanical agenda that the Taliban would find acceptable down the throats of the rest of secular America-- defiling the values of religious pluralism and secular governance that the Founding Fathers they claim to love so dearly laid down as the foundation of our nation.

The NY Archdiocese kicks off the fall season of illegal church electioneering

by Ken

Yes, ladies and germs, it's that time in the election cycle when the right-wing cahootsniks of the various law-snubbing faiths of American Religion Inc. do their darnedest to flaunt and flout every law and regulation on the books governing church participation in politics, one of the basic facts of the separation of church and state we theoretically insist on, in part as part of the exchange by which religious institutions enjoy their tax-free status.

Each time out we hear the most egregious of the horror stories, and vows to take it up with the IRS, which has jurisdiction over those tax exemptions. But nothing happens, because, after all, who is there in authority who's going to tell any church of any size, "Hey, you guys can't do that"?

With Cardinal Dolan having demonstrated his sway over both organized Republicans and Democrats at the recent nominating conventions, it seems fitting that the opening salvo of the 2012 religious-election-abuse season should be fired within the cardinal's very own archdiocese. Credit Americans United for Separation of Church and State with at least making an issue of it.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, is one of the good guys in American religion, a minister (United Church of Christ) who actually believes in the practice of religion consistent with basic American values -- as set out, you know, in the Constitution. His organization has put out the following press release.

Americans United Asks IRS To Investigate NYC Church That Endorsed Romney In Its Bulletin
Church-State Watchdog Group Says Church of Saint Catherine Of Siena May Have Violated Federal Law With Election Intervention

Sep 7, 2012

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate a New York City church that endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in its church bulletin.

The Church of Saint Catherine of Siena’s Sept. 2 bulletin contains a column by the Rev. John Farren, a member of the congregation’s pastoral staff. Titled “From Father Farren, O.P.,” the essay reprints an appeal by several former U.S. ambassadors to the Vatican calling on Catholics to vote for Romney.

The appeal, which Farren reproduced in full, criticizes the Obama administration and concludes, “We urge our fellow Catholics, and indeed all people of good will, to join with us in this full-hearted effort to elect Governor Mitt Romney as the next President of the United States.”

In a complaint to the IRS sent today, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, requested an investigation. Lynn noted that federal law forbids non-profit churches from intervening in elections. He also pointed out that IRS rules specifically state that tax-exempt entities may not reprint endorsements made by other groups and people.

“This is an audacious attempt by a tax-exempt church to intervene in the presidential election,” Lynn said. “This is a church, not a political action committee. It should play by the reasonable rules that other tax-exempt organizations follow.”

Americans United’s Project Fair Play encourages religious organizations to learn about the provisions of federal tax law. When churches or other religious groups flagrantly violate the law, AU files complaints with the IRS.

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

HERE'S THE TEXT OF THE LETTER
AMERICANS UNITED SENT THE IRS

Sept. 7, 2012

Lois G. Lerner, Director
Exempt Organizations Division
Internal Revenue Service 1111 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20224

Dear Ms. Lerner,

I believe the Church of Saint Catherine of Siena in New York City may have violated federal tax law by intervening in the presidential campaign. I’m writing today to urge you to investigate this matter.

A church bulletin dated Sept. 2, 2012, contains a column authored by the Rev. John Farren titled “From Father Farren, O.P.” The column, which appears on page three of the bulletin, reprints a letter that was issued by several former U.S. ambassadors to the Vatican calling on Catholics to vote for Mitt Romney for president.

The letter that Farren reproduces in whole contains a lengthy attack on the Obama administration and concludes, “We urge our fellow Catholics, and indeed all people of good will, to join with us in this full-hearted effort to elect Governor Mitt Romney as the next President of the United States.”

I have enclosed a copy of the entire bulletin. The letter reproduced within it contains a clear, unambiguous endorsement of Romney. A tax-exempt organization may not reproduce a letter like this, which is obviously designed to intervene in the presidential election.

Farren’s claim that the letter deals with issue of religious freedom is no defense. The central thrust of the letter is to endorse Romney.

Nor is the fact that the letter was produced by others a defense. The IRS publication “Election Year Activities and the Prohibition on Political Campaign Intervention for Section 501(c)(3) Organizations” (FS-2006-17, February 2006) is clear on this matter. It states, “Distributing statements prepared by others that favor or oppose any candidate for public office will also violate the prohibition.”

I believe use of the church bulletin in this manner by the Church of Saint Catherine of Siena may amount to a violation of federal law. I urge you to promptly investigate this incident. The Church of Saint Catherine of Siena’s address is: 411 E. 68th Street, New York, NY 10065-6305. Telephone: (212) 988-8300.

Sincerely,

Barry W. Lynn
Executive Director

My guess is that the NY Archdiocese will promote a bit more discretion among its people. There are ways of getting the message across, after all, without being quite so flagrant. Meanwhile, a tip: Don't hold your breath waiting for the IRS to spring into action.

#

From FDR To Reagan, Bush And Obama... How The Hell Did That Happen?

Before getting into Richard Kline's brilliant analysis at Naked Capitalism, let me just start off with a little tangent about politicized religious extremism from yesterday's L.A. Times by Tom Hamburger and Matea Gold. Fascism is on the march and the anti-Jesus forces within organized commercial Christianity are, as always, marching along with them. The Times team reports that there is "a growing movement of evangelical pastors who are jumping into the electoral fray as never before, preaching political engagement from the pulpit as they mobilize for the 2012 election." Obama's Justice Department, of course, is ignoring this egregious constitutional breach.

This new activism has substantial muscle behind it: a cadre of experienced Christian organizers and some of the conservative movement's most generous donors, who are setting up technologically sophisticated operations to reach pastors and their congregations in battleground states.

The passion for politics stems from a collision of historic forces, including heightened local organizing around the issues of abortion and gay marriage and a view of the country's debt as a moral crisis that violates biblical instruction. Another major factor: Both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Bachmann, contenders for the GOP nomination, are openly appealing to evangelical Christian voters as they blast President Obama's leadership.

Both Republican and Democratic strategists say that pastors have already helped unleash an army of voters to shape the GOP primary contests in Iowa and South Carolina, two states with large numbers of conservative Christians. They are making plans to do the same in states that are even more important to next year's general election. Those include Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Virginia and Colorado, where evangelical voters make up about a quarter of the electorate and their participation could greatly aid Republicans.

"The Christian activist right is the largest, best-organized and, I believe, the most powerful force in American politics today," said Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist who recently provided briefings on the constituency to wealthy donors on the left. "No other political group comes even close."

Maybe he doesn't know any billionaires. They're organized too-- organized for plutocracy, organized for another push for fascism. And they have every intention of winning this time. And this time there is no Franklin Roosevelt standing in their way. Instead, we're stuck with a pathetically weak, inexperienced, justifiably unpopular and grotesquely conflicted Barack Obama. And that brings us to Kline's essay, Progressively Losing. His thesis is that "progressives" lose because winning isn't their goal. "Their principal concern," writes Kline, "is to criticize the moral failings of others in society, particularly the moral failings of those in power."

I would loosely divide the left side of the political spectrum in America into liberals, ‘progressives,’ and radicals... Liberals are great believers in ‘the law,’ and happy enough to live and let live until they are in a pinch or have to give up something for the greater good-- at which point they scream for a cop or start in on how ‘we’ can’t afford X. Liberalism isn’t primarily a moral position but a practical attachment to personal liberty and property. If one abandons that allowance for others, one is soon threatened as well since power unchecked makes few fine distinctions, so it’s a ‘hang together and don’t rock the boat’ perspective rather than one of commitment. I’m not going to spend verbiage here discussing this community because they go with the flow rather than push any program. As such, they shape little in the way of policy. The principal asset to left activism provided by liberals is their inertia, since the American political tradition is a significantly liberal one, and American governmental institutions are substantially so on paper. Fascism and oligarchy are pushing on a mountain of lard in trying to shift liberal inertia, with limited success. The only way really to move the ‘liberal muddle’ is to set fire to its peripheries. The good news is that liberals don’t want to change what they have, and clutch for ‘the government and experts’ to save them if things go sour. (Although that’s also the bad news...)

Secondly, let’s dispense with several basic misconceptions regarding why progressives are presently so unsuccessful.

“Progressive goals are not popular.” Even with the systematically distorted polling data of the present, this is demonstrably untrue. Inexpensive health care, progressive taxation, educational scholarship funding, curtailment of foreign wars, environmental protection among others never fail to command majority support. It is difficult to think of a major progressive policy which commands less than a plurality. This situation is one reason for the lazy reliance upon electioneering by progressives, they know that their issues are popular, in principle at least. Rather childishly, they just want a show of hands then, as if that is what goes on really in elections.

“The ‘Right’ is too strong.” The oligarchy specifically and the Right in general are far less strong in American society apart from what their noise machines and bankroll flashing would make one think. The great bulk of the judiciary remains independent even if important higher appellate positions are tainted. Domestic policing is, by tradition and design, highly decentralized, with a good deal of local control, making overt police state actions difficult, visible, and highly unpopular (think TSA). While the military is a socially conservative society in itself, it is also an exceptionally depoliticized one, with civilian control an infrangible value. Popular voter commitment to the nominally more conservative political party has never been narrower or more fragile.

The rightist oligarchy does have a stranglehold on the major media, despite which accurate, uncensored, news is widely and readily available to anyone who wants to hear it. The other principle advantage of conservatives is that they are highly organized. Consider how the oligarchy effectively took over the ‘Tea Potter’ lunatic fringe in no time, and still presently stage manages it behind the curtain, or how they are paying some outfit(s) to constantly monitor and surreptitiously disrupt liberal to progressive blog-spaces. The powers of the Right are broad but thin and brittle, like a coat of lacquer on everything. Any organized citizen resistance would shatter that surface grip without great difficulty.

Part of the genius of the Right is that they presently operate through puppets, like Scott Walker or Chris Christie, or even Clarence Thomas, rather than attempt to assume direct power. Individual puppets can be kicked out, but they can always buy/indoctrinate another set of quislings because the supply of wannabes is endless. But that is a weakness, too, in that without such a puppet quisling in the right place at the right time (think Tim Geithner) the Right has no grip on key levers of power. The larger point here is that the mass of institutional governance in the US remains wholly separate from conservative control, and is not notably committed to conservative goals.

“America is a conservative society.” That is demonstrably untrue on any historical analysis. Like the other points here, it is a meme invented and spread by the right wing itself... [T]here are specific communities in American culture which are deeply conservative, notably most rural whites. Their society is in fact distinct from the culture of the county as a whole, something they understand but that the majority chooses not to. The point being that their society in America is conservative, but American society as a whole is liberal if one does a sociological analysis...

Anglo-American ‘progressivism’ has its origins in Non-Conformist religious reform communities. These date to Lollard times in England c. 1400, before the US was settled, and always had a significant social reformist element beyond within a professed Christian carapace, as it were. Literacy, education, personal liberty, and economic liberalism are all embedded in this worldview, formed as it was between the contesting pressures of a rapacious, French-speaking aristocracy and a crypto-absolutist monarchy with scant regard for the rule of law, while a venal and irreligious church hierarchy provided no relief. England from c. 1350-1500 was a place of intense factions and irruptions of civil war, leaving a distaste for power-seekers and military rebellion. Few of them were rich; it was a proto-bourgeois and petite bourgeois community, but with religious congregants in the lesser nobility giving them communication with power. The suffered erratic but at times severe religious persecution prior to c. 1600, and political disenfranchisement even after that, which much shaped their negative view of state power. There is much more to this subject, which demands a text no one has yet written. This is a social tradition are both fairly well-defined and quite longstanding.

The first key point is that the tradition of progressive dissent is integrally a religious one. The goal isn’t usually power but ‘truth;’ that those in the right stand up for what is right, and those in the wrong repent. The City on the Hill and all that, but that is the intrinsic value. This is a tradition of ideas, many of them good, many of them implemented-- by others, a point to which I’ll return. Coming forward to a recent and then present American context, consider these policies, all of which still hold for most who would define themselves as progressive:

Anti-colonialism
Anti-militarism
Abolition
Universal, secular education
End to child labor
Universal suffrage
Female legal equality
Consumer protections
Civil rights
Conservation/environmentalism

...A most relevant point is that these are value-driven policies. Notably absent are economic policies. I wouldn’t say that progressives are disinterested in economic well-being, but employment and money are never what has driven them. A right-living society, self-improvement, and justice: these are progressive goals. Recall again that many of them were already bourgeois; that most of historical notice had significant education; that their organizational backbone was women of such background. These conditions apply as much now as ever. Some progressives, many of them women, were radicalized by their experience of social work among the abused poor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Consider Beatrice Potter Webb or Upton Sinclair. Some progressives will fight if backed into a corner; many won’t even then, as there is a strong value placed on pacifism in this socio-community. Think John Woolman and Dorothy Day.

Reviewing the summary above, it will be evident that progressives are ill-equipped by objective and inclination both to succeed in bare-knuckle political strife. One could say unflatteringly that the goal of ‘progressives’ in activism is to raise their personal karma by standing up for what is right. “Sinners repent,” is the substance of their message, and their best dream would be to have those in the wrong do just that, to embrace progressive issues and implement them. More cynically, one wonders whether progressives would be entirely pleased if all of their reforms were implemented, leaving nothing to inveigh against.

Progressives are at their best educating, advocating, and validating those in need well apart from the fray. There are few cases that readily come to mind where progressives have implemented any contested policy on their own initiative without others of different goals involved. Somebody else has to carry the can for their water to get drawn. Without going into examples, that is my opinion, and a conclusion I’ll return to on a different vector below. What progressives do best is to deny and eventually withdraw community sanction for specific practices, so that those practices are eroded and then banned by governing authorities. Where communities are deeply divided and such practices have tenacious constituencies, progressives have few answers and no success.

The origins of Anglo-American radicalism are far less tidy to summarize. To me, it’s an open question whether a native tradition of radicalism even exists. I’ll posit a view, by itself debatable though to me accurate, that radicalism is a secularized derivative of millenarian religious revolt, but modify that contention in saying that ‘bread and justice’ were ever the drivers of such fervor. Religious ‘fairness and community’ were simply the only means long accessible for poor or oppressed communities to intellectually package their dissent and demands. ‘Poor or oppressed communities’: these are the fuel for radicalism, and one finds them far more in Continental Europe than in England. Serfdom was far more advanced there than it ever was in Medieval Britain or Scandinavia (for complex local reasons). Furthermore, social and economic radicalism often only catalyzed in the presence of communal cum national revolts against subjugation.

Howsoever, it is difficult to argue for a radical activist community in the US before extensive non-Anglo immigration. Radicalism certainly hasn’t been limited to industrial or even urban contexts, but then neither has immigration. American mining drew heavily upon experience European mining communities, many of whom who brought radical ideas with them, for instance. Even if one considers civil rights agitation intrinsically radical, the same conclusion holds, for blacks, Catholics, and Jews were by definition non-indigenous to a Protestant British colonial community. I’ve been all through Foner’s work on the growth of American labor, and read a deal else, and while I wouldn’t say it is his conclusion I’m struck by how late and how separate labor demands were in their inception in American left-liberal activism.

The key point is that the tradition of radical activism is integrally an economic one, and secondarily one of social justice. It was pursued by those both poor and ‘out castes,’ who often had communal solidarity as their only asset. It was resisted by force, and thus pursued by those inured to force who understood that power was necessary to victory, and that defeat entailed destitution, imprisonment, and being cut down by live fire from those acting under color of authority with impunity. This was a tradition of demands, many of them quite pragmatic. Few were wholly implemented, but the struggle to gain them forced the door open for narrower reforms, often implemented by the powers that be to de-fuse as much as diffuse radical agitation. Consider these policies, all of which still hold for most who would define themselves as radical:

Call off the cops (and thugs)
Eight hour day and work place safety
Right to organize
Anti-discrimination in housing and hiring
Unemployment dole
Public pensions
Public educational scholarships
Tax the rich
Anti-trust and anti-corporate
Anti-imperialism

While few radicals have made it into public executive positions either, they are numerous in politics, especially at the local level where communal ties can predominate. Radicals have always worked in organized groups-- "societies," unions, and parties-- which have been a multiplier for their demands.

Critically, these are grievance-driven policies. One could say that the goal of radicals is to force an end to exploitation, particularly economic exploitation since most radicals come from those on the bitter end of such equations. As such, many of them have specific remedies or end states. Notably absent are ‘moral uplift,’ better society objectives other than in the abstract sense. Further, since so much of radicalism is communally based it has often been difficult for radicals to form inter-communal alliances.

Secondarily, since the goals are highly specific to individual groups, factionalism is endemic. Radicals have disproportionately been drawn from the poor, and from minority communities; groups who have had little to lose, and for whom even small gains loom large, especially economic ones. These have been disproportionately non-Anglo American, many of whom brought their radicalism with them from prior experiences in Europe, though occasionally their message has radicalized contemporary indigenés, for example ‘Big Bill’ Haywood or John Reed (or Chris Hedges). Radicals have always had to ‘struggle,’ not least since they have consistently been assaulted by other factions and the state: militancy was their real party card. If this wasn’t necessarily violent, it was confrontational, as in boycotts and occupations (sit-downs). While radical women have always been visible, the backbone of radicals always was minority community men. Think Joe Hill and Sam Gompers.

Many earlier immigrant communities experienced considerable oppression, and not only came to America as an escape but brought radical elements with them. That was true amongst German, Polish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants, and was relevant amongst the small West Indian population as well. Their third and fourth generation descendants are, at best, little involved with radical organizing. Present immigrant communities to the US are substantially from Central America and its surrounds, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. These communities have not brought radical elements with them: those have tended to stay home or go elsewhere. They have largely come here for the opportunity to better themselves, and shaking the social order is the last thing on their agenda. The exception to that are Muslim immigrants to the US, of diverse background though substantially Arab in origin. Presently, they lack indigenous American allies, and are heavily policed by the state; they are no way placed to take a vanguard position supposing that they were so inclined.

Reviewing the summary above, it will be evident that the supply of aggrieved militants has thinned out. One could say, uncharitably, they their residual objective has been a piece of the pie, and to be left alone to eat it in dignity. “Share the wealth,” is the substance of their message. Once they have any, the tendency is to sing another song. On a darker note, some were later sedentarized by acquiring apparatuses, which easily rancidify into patronage and rent-seeking gatekeepers.

What radicals do best is bunch up and shove, that is organize and agitate. Those now don’t bunch, and have little inclination to shove as opposed to fit in. But for blatant discrimination, present immigrants would be a reliable, conservative voter base not inclined to pursue economic grievances through activism. Without that muscle, labor has no strength. What labor has are mortgages, debt, and a lot to lose, not a matrix congruent with agitation.

From the perspective here, progressive and radical vectors and their policies overlap directly only in a few areas. Moreover, these vectors have tended to be pursued by discrete demographic and ethnic communities, though of course values and polices have been swapped and shared at times and in places. The success of one vector has tended to advance the success of the other Said another way, they have been more powerful in combination than either would be alone. If radicals might have achieved some of their goals without progressive support, though, the reverse is not true. Progressive advocacy particularly lacks any traction at present absent effective radical agitation to make the progressives seem like ‘the reasonable ones.’

A further conclusion from this analysis is that the assault of the right has been focused disproportionately upon the prior policy and institutional gains of the radical vector. From one perspective, one could hypothesize that the broader socio-culture has focused its response upon the ‘most foreign’ or perhaps ‘least native’ contentions. I’m far from sure that I believe that myself. For one thing, the oligarchy and the right are most hostile to economic claims. With the exception of environmental activism, which has huge economic implications, most advocacy for economic justice has lain primarily with the radical rather than progressive community. Radical agitation has been the most militant, provided the most physical muscle, and is historically sourced amongst the poor, all reasons why radical successes should be expected to draw the larger reactionary attack. Then too, economic reforms are easier to attack since they are far less embedded in law than social reforms. And further, one should not assume a reactionary program will stop if and when the institutional bulwark of economic justice and organization is crushed, since there will be little to bar the marginalization or ban of existing progressive successes after such a point.

Still, any progressive or radical revival has to take into account that the assault of reaction has been principally aimed at economic justice and its supporting legal and institutional bases in the US and the UK.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity..."

If it all seems black, consider: Social justice never seemed deader than 1957, but enormous reforms were enacted by 1974. Progressivism was never more prostrate than c. 1900, but a broad reformist agenda was emplaced by 1916.

The downside to those comparisons, though, is that radicalism did much of the agitation to impel reform in both cases, and it is just that engaged radicalism which we most lack now. To go back a further iteration to the 1849s, progressives sans radicals were far less successful until slaver states were stupid enough to revolt. The American socio-political context is more divided and radicalism weaker today than at any time since the 1840s.

As of 2011, I would say that progressivism is broader and better known than at any time in American history, not least because of the validation and presence of past success. We can rely on the oligarchy to push to egregious excess. What we cannot rely upon is public agitation to be the thin end of the wedge.

Can we, then, expect oligarchical corruption and economic losses to push liberals and the haute bourgeois toward a reformist program? I wouldn’t count on that, and in particular, no one should expect that to happen quickly if it occurs at all. Take as an example Dylan Ratigan’s recent rant against elite corruption (to unfairly single out one prominent instance). His solution? “Let’s all get together on a Big Capitalist Spend-a-thon.” Because we’re ‘too divided,’ so we need something like a ‘Moon Program that brought us together.’ Now, I don’t know where Ratigan was in 1962, but that was the height of Civil Rights agitation, concurrent with mass agitation against atomic weapons testing, and also the start of the anti-poverty campaigns. His image of the country pulling together is something seen through the dollar signs on white tinted glasses, frankly.

But there are two deeper points to take from his appeal. First, he, as many, evidently believes that capitalism will really save him and us, it’s just that ‘a few’ have hijacked it. He doesn’t want to change any system, only to get back to some non-existent past in the imagination when it worked, or rather when it worked ‘for people like me . . er, us.’ Many think like this, and it is a huge load of sand in the crankcase on any drive for change. What these folks want never worked for many in this society, but too many believe in retrospect that it did because that belief validates a lot of comfortable lies. That embrace of plasticine phantasies is a dead weight against change.

Second, Ratigan inveighed against ‘factionalism’ even more than against corrupt oligarchs. Like many, he sees himself as in a reasonable center between ‘the left’ and ‘the right,’ and in firm American tradition mentioned above he is suspicious of special interests advocating ‘their position.’ So he wants us to come together around a common position. Now, the political naivety of this is stunning given the overt, anti-social, anti-citizen program of the right through a generation, pushed in private by many whom he doubtless respects in public.

But even accepting the false analysis, what stands out is the extent to which progressives have let themselves become seen as ‘special interests’ advocating ‘for the few.’ Ratigan isn’t alone; many ‘liberals’ and ‘centrists’ and ‘independent voters’ share this view of progressives, explicitly or implicitly. This is where progressives are in the public mind, and not simply through propaganda from the right.

Progressives have successfully become tarred as ‘factional’ in significant part due to their involvement with identity politics, i.e. ‘X rights.’ The Democratic Party has correctly identified this imprimatur as an electoral loser, and for that reason amongst others have abandoned progressivism in the most cowardly way. However, we cannot expect ‘reasonable centrists,’ delusional or not, to embrace the reform program of ‘those X favorers;’ this will not happen. And not necessarily because ‘centrists’ hate ‘those Xers,’ but because the societal disposition is to shun advocates of minority advantage.

One could list numerous conceptual failures amongst liberal and radical activists in this way. I’m going to limit myself to a few, with similarly few remedies to follow. Progressives have a childish fondness for a show of hands, i.e. elections, and a present obsession with the current reactionary ‘hypocrite’ coughed up by the oligarchy and the latter’s media. Both are pointless and self-defeating. Winning elections doesn’t matter; passing laws and regulations, and winning court decisions on their basis is what matters. The former may lead to the latter, but it hasn’t for twenty years at least. And the oligarchy can always recruit another quisling, the supply is endless; their personalities are irrelevant.

Moreover, the ideological ultra-right doesn’t care if they are in the minority: they’re delusionally convinced of their own validity, and will continue in their ways whether they get 10% or 70% of the vote. What matters isn’t what they’re after but simply beating them.

Progressives have become far too obsessed with ‘the agenda of the right’ to the point that they themselves presently have no positive agenda, certainly none that can draw in the uncommitted. Progressive actions are wholly defensive rather than offensive, and this maximizes the oligarchy’s huge advantage in money and organization. In an endless search for ‘equality,’ progressive activists have handcuffed themselves to the contemporary equivalent of campaigning for temperance (banning alcohol so as to ‘force’ uplift). These activisms and other, broader forms of identity politics aren’t something I would call for abandoning. They cannot, however, recruit a wider reform movement, and indeed actively repel those of limited political education because they focus inherently on ‘some, not all.’

On the radical side, employer based privileges (i.e. ‘contracts’) will continue to be broad-base losers for left liberals, exactly because they inherently favor ‘some, not all.’ The workplace organizing model was always compromised; in the US, it has failed. Narrow unions are dead, not least because corporations can move jobs, sites, and countries far too readily. Something much in evidence now amongst anti-union working class and petit bourgeois folks who should, in principle, support unions to enhance ‘prevailing standards’ gains is, explicitly, spite that some have good jobs and protections while these others don’t. If rightist propaganda has exploited this, the situation is nonetheless a huge bar to extending a radical reform program even amongst existing union members, to say nothing of those on the outside. Issue- and instance-specific campaigns such as opposition to fracking run into the same problems. If you are directly effected, it’s a crisis; if you live 100 miles away, it’s not your problem (seemingly).

Similarly, “Free my spliff” doesn’t have much currency for non-tokers. The problem is that instance- and job-specific injustices have always been and remain primary, organizational drawing cards. These are what radicalize many individuals, and get them involved with activism to solve them.

To me, the only way out of these dead ends lies in committing to a defined agenda of institutionalized, economic justice because this affects all. Social justice cannot be secured absent economic justice. Any such agenda is going to be anti-corporate, anti-poverty, pro-education (and job re-education), and pro-regulation. It has to be citizen-based outside of existing political parties. This kind of program can be articulated as pro-community rather than pro-faction if the organizing is done. This has to be pursued from a defined agenda, unapologetically, and from a pro-citizen(ship) position regardless of other more discrete goals.
Will Anglo-American progressives articulate any such program and organize around it? I can’t say that I’m optimistic. Yates said it best in the fewest words in a comparable social moment heading on for four generations ago. To extend upon that thought, the contemporaneous Fabian Society had a fine, progressive program. Almost anything they could have aimed for within reason was ultimately put in place too—from 1944-50 when the British Empire was derelict, the state effectively bankrupt, and the ruling class irretrievably discredited by their knee-jerk nationalism and societal niggardlyness. Between the wars, Fabian successors were unable to accomplish anything meaningful on their own.

And yes, we too now can rely upon the oligarchy to fail. They have nothing to offer 90% of the citizenry, economically or socially. They have been serial catastrophists in their grossly speculative market manipulation, and only grasp after ever more gassy phantasms following each failure. Their ‘bombsight hegemony’ pursued abroad gets no peace, no silence, and no net profit. Both on an historical basis and on present scrutiny, we can rely upon the extractive class to drive themselves right into the bridge abutment of ruin.

What we can’t rely upon is for them to impact that moment quickly. From an historical and cyclical perspective, ‘just waiting it out’ might take until 2035, even 2045. Now a generation of squalor and iniquity in the US is nothing to remark on scaled against world-historical standards; it would fit with the rule of things rather than the exceptions. Americans think that they are exceptional, and that that isn’t how they do things. Well, they’ll have to live up to that, because what is certain is that we won’t have reform without struggle. Government-buying oligarchs; sold-out liberals clutching their meal tickets; loose cannon fascist minority; deeply divided society: that’s too many logs to leap on a single, lucky bound, or to be rolled by Some Sainted Prez (of which we’ll have none). If we want change sooner than a generation of rot from now, it will have to be worked for, and worked for not with wagging fingers and dabs of money thrown at issues but with organization.

Progressives will continue to lose as long as they continue to act with strategic irresolution and tactical incompetence. They no longer have a political party to carry their banner: the Democrats have completely shut them out. Waverers and the Great Huddled Middle won’t respect, and so won’t support, natterers who won’t fight.

We are not in a time for converting but one for confronting; not a time for compromise but a time for direct action. Holding actions are a way to lose slowly, an offensive program is needed. Naming and shaming, and electing the Next Great Saviour have both failed, and progressives need to get off those donkeys and articulate a real activist agenda. Spectacle gatherings which the media ignore and where everyone goes home Monday morning are presently ineffective because there is no organized base to make use of them. Money is not the main problem; feet on the ground moving forward are the real problem. A discrete agenda pursued full-time by experienced organizers is the solution. Less talk, and more walk.

Progressives have successfully stamped Big Capital as ‘anti-us’ historically, and they need to return to this. Those active for social reform have to forget about the electoral cycle. They have to forget about what the lunatic Right is doing as much as possible and concentrate on what they themselves are in process of accomplishing. They need a compact reform agenda (yes, bullet points and not more than ten of them). They need a defined activist strategy, no matter how large the difficulties or time horizon appear. They need to build genuinely activist organizations with specific plans to achieve a core set of goals. And they have to reclaim militancy as a word, and deed, of pride. If they do those things, they will make real progress, and moreover they will be ready when the moment comes for breakthrough amongst the wider society.

Boehner And The GOP Breach The Wall Separating Church And State

Though Cantor & Boehner have been threatening Republican caucus members with committee demotions if they dared to vote for unions in the onslaught of anti-worker legislation Boehner is delivering for the Kochs and other nefarious characters who bankrolled his ascension to the Speakers chair, yesterday 9 Republicans broke with the GOP's latest anti-worker bill (and Boehner only managed to hold onto one-- the weakest and most craven-- conservative Democrat, Dan Lipinski (IL). As part of the Republican drive to destroy public education and the teachers unions, they passed some crap voucher program that is unlikely to go anywhere. The Republicans sticking with the teachers unions and with public education and giving Boehner and Cantor the finger, were:

Judy Biggert (IL), desperate to make people forget about her anti-jobs outburst Tuesday
Robert Dold (IL)
Sam Graves (MO)
Morgan Griffith (VA)
Tim Johnson (IL)
Frank LoBiondo (NJ)
Ron Paul (TX)
Dave Reichert (WA)
Mike Simpson (ID)

The bill itself will cost $300 million-- which, breaking House rules, is not off-set by any cuts elsewhere-- and help exactly 879 students enroll in Catholic schools.

The Founding Fathers must be frowning on House Speaker John Boehner; you can almost envision the furrow on Thomas Jefferson's brow.

How could this fine conservative lawmaker from Ohio, who often cloaks himself in the Constitution, go on a crusade to give federal funds to D.C.'s Catholic schools? What happened to the separation of church and state?

It was Jefferson who first articulated the notion that the new country he helped found should create some distance between organized religion and the its government. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, he wrote that he contemplates "with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

People For the American Way termed the legislative boondoggle costly, ineffective and constitutionally troubling. PFAW's President, Michael Keegan saw right through Boehner's strategy:

“While Republicans in Congress try to cut millions of dollars from public education programs in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’ they are positively eager to pour $100 million into an ineffective voucher program that raises troubling constitutional issues and that DC doesn’t even want. Study after study has shown that the voucher program has done nothing to help DC’s kids learn-- the main beneficiaries are the religious institutions that receive funding that would be better spent on public schools, and Republican members of Congress who receive a talking point for their base. House Republicans need to stop using DC’s kids as pawns in their culture war, and start working to fix the budget crisis that they claim to be so concerned about.”

And don't forget Lipinski. He has a primary opponent next year, John Atkinson.

The Church Also Wants To Kill The Bill, Though Not For The Same Reasons Howard Dean Does

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm spending some time in Rome this month, getting to know the city a little more in depth than on previous visits, which were always for just a day or two here and there, rather than for an extended stay. This time I've been meeting lots of Romans and, since it feels like we're one of only a small population of hearty tourists braving the cold, wet Roman winter, people have time and inclination to talk with us. I'm sure someone thinks highly of Catholics, Inc-- but no one we've met. I mean, maybe they like it or revere it deep down somewhere but all we hear is a lot of resentment towards the Church. Around a third of Italians are active members of the Church. Over two-thirds aren't-- and many of them aren't happy with the power the Church exerts over their country, a power that is at all times extremely reactionary when it comes to politics.

The Church doesn't exactly rule Rome any longer. Not exactly. In 1870 what was left of the Pope's temporal empire, the Papal States-- after 1860, namely Rome-- was absorbed into the new Kingdom of Italy. In 1929, by virtue of the Lateran Treaty, Mussolini made a deal with the Pope giving him sovereignty over 110 acres in the middle of Rome (Vatican City)-- plus Castel Gandolfo and other Church-owned properties scattered around Rome-- in return for the Church opening up its incredible art collections to the public (and the Pope ceasing its campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Italian state). The Lateran Treaty and Concordat also made the Roman Catholic religion the Kingdom's official state religion. The influence of the Church on the state is conservative and anti-democratic and always holds Rome back in terms of progress on every front. When Italians are able to vote against the Church's policies they do-- in overwhelming numbers. For example, in 1981 when the Church backed a proposal to repeal the 1978 law making abortion in the first trimester legal and free, it was defeated in a national referendum by nearly 70%. According to wikipedia "Italian women are eligible to request an abortion for health, economic or social reasons, including the circumstances under which conception occurred. Abortions are performed free-of-charge in public hospitals or in private structures authorized by the regional health authorities. The law also allows termination in the second trimester of the pregnancy only in one of the following cases: a) when the life of the woman would be at risk if the pregnancy is carried to term; b) the fetus carries genetic or other serious malformations which would put the mother at risk of serious psychological or physical consequences."

The Church has actually exerted more power over abortion politics in the U.S., though, of course not on a grassroots level, than in Italy! The Church has been firmly aligned with the most reactionary political forces-- i.e., the Republican Party-- in a quest to overturn legalized abortion. In Rome people see how the Church has stolen everything they could get their hands on in terms of the city's natural heritage. The ancient ruins didn't just fall apart because of inclement weather. Every inch of magnificence of Vatican City-- all the marble, the mosaics, the bronze, the ancient sculptures...-- was looted from the Imperial Roman masterpieces that hover over the city today as ruins. The popes ruined them by appropriating whatever they could carry away.

In our own country, the extreme right-wing organization known as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has been working overtime to use the debate over healthcare to weaken the legitimacy of safe and legal abortion. They've gone well beyond working with Republican Party and conservative Democratic politicians, and well beyond threatening and even banning liberal politicians. They have been actively participating in the details of the healthcare bill in terms of Choice. Robert Casey (D-PA), generally a moderate-to-progressive senator considered staunchly anti-choice has been the go-between with the Church and the Democrats. Friday they said they're not satisfied with the deal he helped broker between the Democrats and Ben Nelson, the deal which looks like the end of the debate.

Galveston-Houston Archbishop Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, rejected the compromise language Casey has been working to craft on the bill's federal support for purchasing insurance plans covering abortions.


“I welcome Senator Casey’s good-faith effort to improve this bill," DiNardo said in a statment. "However, these improvements do not change the fundamental problem with the Senate bill: Despite repeated claims to the contrary, it does not comply with longstanding Hyde restrictions on federal funding of elective abortions and health plans that include them."

...Casey unveiled his abortion language on Friday afternoon, touting support from a number of faith-based groups, including the Catholic Health Association, Evangelicals for Social Action, and the National Hispanic Leadership Conference.

The Casey proposal would assure segregate private premiums from taxpayer subsidies for plans, and allowing individuals to opt out from their premiums going to subsidize plans covering abortions.

The Catholic bishops had been instrumental in working to attach Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) amendment curtailing support for abortion coverage to the House bill. A similar amendment failed to muster the votes in the Senate. Casey's proposal is an attempt to bridge the current legislation and the Stupak language.

I'm not one who thinks the whole Church hierarchy should be rounded up and put on trial for systematic child rape. I'm not one who thinks there is collective guilt for the Church and that they should all be severely punished. Trials where trials are due, of course, but there are some decent priests who actually care about Jesus' message of love and peace and who are dedicated to helping the poor and not just catering to the wealthy and powerful. Sure, they're a tiny minority and have no power whatsoever in the Church hierarchy but I just want to be clear that I don't think every singe priest is a villain. On the other hand, the Church's interference in politics has been so overwhelming and systematic and detrimental to the country that there is no doubt that these crooks should have been paying taxes for decades.

[A]ny religious organization that lives up to its commitments to its congregation and community would have nothing to fear from filing a tax return, just like every other non-profit... [and] when these institutions pay taxes like every other non-profit, each citizen's tax burden is significantly lessened and consequently he or she may better endow a worthy institution with individual support... It will be obvious to rational people that exempting religious organizations from paying any taxes is a clear case of government "respecting an establishment of religion." But throughout history we have seen many otherwise-lucid thinkers insist otherwise, including Supreme Court justices who uphold biblical views when their taxpayer-funded jobs explicitly require them to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

...Many [churches] are among the wealthiest organizations in the world: by 1971, the amount of real and personal property owned by U.S. churches was approx. $110 billion. In New York City alone, the amount was $3 billion in 1989. A 1986 estimate showed religious income in that year of approx. $100 billion, or about five times the income of the five largest corporations in the U.S.  All tax free.

Long past time for that to end. Long past time for the taxpayers of this country to be subsidizing the Church's pernicious reactionary politics and their perverted and predatory towards children. At the very least, they should be put on the defensive trying to hold onto their ill-gotten wealth and power instead of having them interfere with public policy they way they've been doing in the healthcare debate. The Pope didn't like this speech JFK gave in Houston in 1960 when he was running for Congress:

Michele Bachmann Knows She Deserves God's Wrath

I was hoping-- when I saw her in the video below-- that Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was finally going to confess she had gotten drunk at a congressional St. Patrick's Day party a couple years ago, puked in the lady's room and then snuck out without cleaning up, only to then cower in fear that her crazy colleague from southern Ohio, Mean Jean Schmidt, had slipped in the vomit and ruined her dress. But no, it was just about persuading God to help Republicans keep people from getting healthcare.

I spent nearly the whole day yesterday, starting at 8:30 AM, in the Vatican. It was wonderfully uplifting. I've been there several times before, but never with an art historian nor with any kind of a guide. This time my docent, Sarah, took me through the vast art collection-- or at least a part of it; it would take weeks to see it all-- and helped me understand that most of the popes had more to do with commissioning and collecting art-- and in the Baroque Period, primarily as propaganda-- than they did with anything remotely spiritual or even "religious." Glorifying their noble families' names-- it wasn't until 1978, with the election of John Paul I as the 263rd pope, that a man not of aristocratic family ascended to the papacy; he was murdered after 33 days-- was the name of the game for many; temporal power was what it was about for even more.

Sarah went to Catholic school when she was a girl, which, I assume is where she lost her religion and became, I'm guessing, an atheist. She was happy to repeat all the phony baloney Vatican propaganda as we traipsed through the museums, the Sistene Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica, assuring me, when I pressed her, that none of it was remotely true. But the art was so inspiring and... divine. Look at that wonderful Pietà by the then 23 year old unknown Michelangelo above! It's breathtaking. (If you can't make it to Rome, there are authorized duplicates at the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Poznań, St. John's Cathedral in Bundang, Korea, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasília, Brazil, St. Mary's Parish, Spring Lake, MI, St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, Cathedral of Our Lady of Refuge in Matamoros, Mexico, the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis and at St. Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie in Yonkers, New York.)

Somehow I doubt many people look at this sublime work, or the authorized copies, and think about how healthcare for American families must be derailed by God's intervention. But then I've never met deranged religious fanatics like Jim DeMint (an admitted member of the DC-based religio-fascist cult called The Family), Sam Brownback and Michele Bachmann. The Founding Fathers had, though, which is why they took such pains to erect a wall between Church and State, a wall these fanatics are determined to tear down. They very much want religion-- particularly their inauthentic religion to have a hand, to put it mildly, in public policy so it can be used the way authoritarians have used religious hocus pocus since the beginning of history. Sometimes we lose track of how much less bad Democrats like Obama, Ben Nelson and even Rahm Emanuel are than Republicans. Now, please, watch Rachel Maddow put this all in context while I go tour the fabulous Colosseum, a place where a wall between church and state was never contemplated.




UPDATE: When Shit Don't Stink

Sarah didn't bother to walk over herself but she encouraged me to take a peek at the glassed-in open casket of Pope John XXIII who died in 1963. Popes are usually buried downstairs but this one is supposed to be an example of incorruptibility so he's hanging out upstairs where he's hard to miss (under the wax that encloses his body). It's macabre. Yogandanda, who's at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, was certified incorruptible before he was embalmed in 1952. Anyway, the current head of the Church announced today that he's movin' two other popes, John Paul II and Pius XII-- but not John XXIII-- along the road to sainthood. Like the current head of Catholics, Inc., the non-incorruptible Pius XII, was a detestable Nazi stooge. By pairing the loathed Nazi pope with the loved JP II, Benedict probably hoped there wouldn't be as much of a stink. Next stop for these two is beatification.

And... the healthcare reform bill, now mutated into an unrecognizable form as one conservative lackey after another threw a tantrum and was placated, looks like it has the requisite 60 votes to overcome the GOP filibuster. Nelson feels the ability for backward, racist states to opt out of abortion coverage for poor women is good enough for him.

The Bloody Hand Of $enator Ben Nel$on

-by NOAH


Nebraska $enator Ben Nelson is apparently either unfamiliar with the Constitutional concept of Separation of Church and State, disdains it, or both. That said, the concept was and is a key building block of what this country is supposed to be about. It is a part of what makes us different than much of the 18th century Europe that we fought so hard to divorce ourselves from. Would the likes of Ben Nelson and his ilk have hung around with General George Washington for that horrible winter in Valley Forge. I doubt it. No, he more likely would have been parking his fat butt in front of a nice warm fire with the rest of the mercenary Hessians fighting for the British. What happened to them, Ben?

It is $enator Ben Nelson who came up with the idea of turning over his anti-choice health care amendment to the Catholic Church (in the form of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) for approval and donations this past week. This attempt to erode a woman’s rights, like fighting for equal pay for equal work or even a woman’s right to vote or even go to law school is typical Republican agenda mongering. But, submitting the language of his hateful amendment to the Catholic Church for approval? Now just imagine if some other cretinous $enator decided that they would pass their amendments over to a group of Muslim Imams for review before their amendments went to a vote. Would the media be as silent as they are now? There is no difference. Check this out from the Congressional Quarterly:

“Ben Nelson hardened his stance on abortion language Thursday, stating he would not vote for a health care overhaul unless the bill’s proposed restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions are tightened. [Though] he had said earlier in the week that abortion language was not a make or break proposition in the debate.”

Nelson says he’ll join the Repug filibuster if he and his Catholic Church masters don’t get their way. Jeez. Thanks Ben. 20,000 living. breathing citizens are dying a year due to inadequate health care and decent insurance coverage and you’d just let them die. That’s over 6 times the amount of citizens Bin Laden killed on 9/11. Does that warm your cold dead heart? Why don’t you just go on a road trip now and personally kill all of them yourself? I know. So little time, so many graves to spit on. Like a true coward, you won’t do it with a gun or a knife. You’ll do it from afar with a pen. I didn’t even mention the tens of thousands of your fellow citizens who won’t be dying but will be suffering painfully every year because of the actions of you and vermin just like you. You and your buddy Orrin Hatch, he of the Exorcist book, are so petty about this amendment that you held it up because he wanted the amendment to list HIS name first. God, you people are juvenile AND insane. Nebraska is the corn husker state. Go home and pay a visit to the Children Of The Corn. I'm sure they'll know what to do with you.

I guess in Ben Nelson’s unconstitutional anti-American mind, he sees a beautiful future where Presidents give the State of The Union address with the VP, the House Speaker and a Bishop or Cardinal sitting on the dais behind them, with full control of the speech of course. It’s odd how things have changed in our country. Back during the 1960 campaign, conservatives were all up in arms about the fact that a Catholic named John Kennedy was running for President and that this was a dangerous thing because, in their weirdo minds, The Vatican would be calling the shots if JFK won. Wasn’t having K Street writing our legislation bad enough? Think about it: Multi-nationals and Rome ruling our lives by creating the policies and laws we have to live under. Thanks Ben. Why not turn us back over to the inbred British Royals too? People actually voted for this clown?

Jesus Certainly Had It All Right But The Catholic Church Seems To Have Turned It All On Its Head

- by Mary Jean Collins

Watch out Catholic Bishops, it looks like the younger generation of Catholic elected officials are not going to continue the careful reverence or fear of the hierarchy the last generation displayed. In an act to courage, leadership and defiance, in October, Rep Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI), called out the hierarchy for their lack of support for the health care reform bill. In an interview with Cybercast News Service on October 21, Kennedy said he could not understand “how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time” adding that its stance was fanning “flames of dissent and discord.” Representative Kennedy may feel a unique responsibility for passage of this bill since the death of his father, Senator Kennedy this last summer.

The day after Kennedy’s statements, Bishop Thomas J Tobin, the Bishop of the Providence Rhode Island Diocese called the comments “irresponsible and ignorant of the facts” and also called Kennedy “a disappointment” to the church.

Kennedy did not back down. On November 7, he voted against the amendment sponsored by Bart Stupak- (D-MI 1) and Joe Pitts (R-PA 16) that would prohibit federal funds from paying for any part of a health insurance plan that covers abortion. He was not the only Catholic Democrat to do so. In fact, only 36 Catholic Democrats voted for the amendment while 50 including Kennedy voted against it. Kennedy then voted to pass the Health Care legislation. Six Catholic Democrats voted for Stupak-Pitts and against health care reform. I wonder if they have heard from their Bishops about that vote.
 
After the House vote, Bishop Tobin issued an open letter to Representative Kennedy criticizing his vote and questioning his faith. Bishop Tobin called Kennedy’s support of abortion rights “a deliberate and obstinate act of the will” that was “unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members.”

Kennedy then revealed that Bishop Tobin had instructed him not to receive Communion (a central religious practice) and told priests in the diocese not to give Kennedy communion. Tobin admitted that he had written a letter in 2007 asking Kennedy to refrain from communion by denied it was an outright ban. A planned meeting between the Bishop and Representative Kennedy has been put on hold.

On Monday, another Catholic Representative took the initiative to speak out in defense of Representative Kennedy. Representative Patrick Murphy (D-PA8). Murphy stated: “We don’t legislate at the orders of the Vatican, we legislate what is in our conscience and what we think is good for our country." Ironically Murphy was at Harvard to receive a John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from Caroline Kennedy, President Kennedy’s daughter. 

Murphy also discussed the punishment he had received at the hands of his parish priest when he married his wife Jenni in 2006. The priest refused to bless the marriage because of Murphy’s stand on abortion rights.

Murphy ran for Congress in 2006 as a returning Iraq vet against an incumbent Republican Thomas Fitzgerald. It was a very close race and in the end Murphy won by 1500 votes. I was impressed at the time at the courage of this candidate because he was unfailing in his support of reproductive right and LGBT rights. 

I’ve worked in various prochoice advocacy organizations for over 30 years. Having outspoken Catholic public officials is one excellent way of breaking the Bishop’s hold on Congress. It is long overdue to question whether a handful of Bishops actually speak for the Catholic people. When they go to the Hill it is time to make clear, the people are not following, not in policy and not in elections. The Bishops have hidden behind their support of social legislation to blunt criticism of their holding every issue hostage to the abortion issue. 

Winning health care reform without giving in to the Bishops demands will embolden Catholics, office holders and people to expect a Church that pretends to support social justice to put up or shut up.

Robert McDonnell (R-VA)-- Living Up To Buy Bull "School" Expectations

Pat & Bob- Master and Servant

We've all made mistakes when we were teenagers that we regret now. When I was in high school I won a scholarship from the UN by writing a paper favoring the death penalty without understanding the absolute inability of judges and juries to be able to guarantee the accuracy of their assessments of guilt. In theory I still favor the death penalty; in practice I oppose it and I'm embarrassed that I wrote that paper. I had just turned 16 at the time.

Today's Washington Post reports, at some length, on a Master's Thesis (here it is in all it's startlingly banal glory) by Robert McDonnell, The Republican Party's Vision For The Family: The Compelling Issue of The Decade. In it McDonnell described working woman and feminists as "detrimental" to the family and he advocated for a very totalitarian position-- beloved of both the Communist and Nazi regimes on the 1940s-- that government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

He wasn't attending a real school at the time-- but a Buy Bull "college" run by Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach. One can't logically expect anything else from students of these institutions other than, at best, polished up propaganda, devoid of depth or any kind of critical thinking which is absolutely discouraged in these kinds of brainwashing centers. Today McDonnell, a vicious homophobe and far right extremist, is a candidate for governor of Virginia and he's whining that voters shouldn't judge him based on "a decades-old academic paper I wrote as a student." He wasn't 16 when he wrote it. Nor was he 26. He was 34, hardly a brash act by an intellectually unformed child. In fact, examining McDonnell's legislative record, it is clear that he has been attempting to implement the largely religionist ideas in his paper and force them on all Virginians. (The Buy Bull "college" where he went for his formal brainwashing, Regent, has as its motto: "Christian leadership to change the world.")

The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families -- a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

One of his thesis' points is the old right wing canard, pushed by Robertson and drummed into the heads of all Regent's students, that the Founding Fathers did not favor separation of Church and State. Another pushes a bizarre plan-- which he went on to push in the Virginia legislature-- to make it more difficult for couples to get divorced and he advocated for religionist indoctrination in public schools. And he make sit clear that he feels progressive taxation policy is "socialist" and should be abolished, something that would tend to wipe out the middle class and gradually bring back the kind of feudal society right-wing loons like McDonnell crave. He was successful in repealing Virginia's estate tax, one of the points he advocated in his paper.

During the campaign McDonnell has been frantic about covering up his extremism and posing as a moderate. Conservatives wink and nod and keep their collective fingers crossed that they can get a true believer into the governor's mansion.

Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), who has shared most of McDonnell's conservative positions over the years, said there is no question that the candidate is playing down his conservatism today. Marshall said McDonnell risks alienating two groups of voters: moderates who might view him as hiding his true beliefs and conservatives who might think that he is no longer conservative enough.

"If you duck something, that tells your opponents that you think your position is a liability," said Marshall, who is backing McDonnell. "Why else wouldn't you acknowledge it? But I'll tell you, I've got precinct captains who are annoyed that he's not answering these questions. He doesn't have to bash people in the head with it. But he doesn't have to put it in the closet, either. There's a balance you can take."

Republican Politicians Burying Themselves?

Cheney endorses Limbaugh

I had to laugh when I saw James Carville talking-- Rove-like-- about how the Democrats would stay in power until 2049 and even sillier is the notion that the GOP could crumble completely and make way for a new mainstream party, Whigs, Libertarians, or otherwise.

On the other hand, the shrinking congressional GOP rump sure seems to be working hard to guarantee the party's demise. And the media creatures who have served them so well in spreading their twisted vision of America, particularly, Rush Limbaugh, seems to have painted them into an untenable corner, one that works well for someone looking for ad sales in a minutely fractionalized radio market but not one that works when you're interested in appealing to the American mainstream.

Today right-wing hack Fred Barnes placed himself firmly in the Limbaugh camp, urging more of the obstructionism that has brought GOP polling numbers to an all time low and costing them an upstate NY congressional seat where there are 70,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.

Improving the party's image is a worthy cause, but it isn't what Republicans ought to be emphasizing right now. They have a more important mission: to be the party of no. And not just a party that bucks Obama and Democrats on easy issues like releasing Gitmo terrorists in this country, but one committed to aggressive, attention-grabbing opposition to the entire Obama agenda.

Many Republicans recoil from being combative adversaries of a popular president. They shouldn't. Opposing Obama across-the-board on his sweeping domestic initiatives makes sense on substance and politics. His policies-- on spending, taxes, health care, energy, intervention in the economy, etc.--would change the country in ways most Americans don't believe in. That's the substance. And a year or 18 months from now, after those policies have been picked apart and exposed and possibly defeated, the political momentum is likely to have shifted away from Obama and Democrats.

That Obama's policies are what Americans want, need and deserve seems never have occurred to Barnes. Nor would it. Barnes is a hopeless shill for all that has brought the GOP to the brink of extinction. If you didn't hit that Libertarian link above, let me quote what our Libertarian friend had to say about what's left of the Republican coalition:

The party of Lincoln, as it occasionally tries to brand itself when it notices that likely black voters are in the room, would horrify the 16th President. The “base” of the Republican party is a handful of uber-wealthy patricians who want to protect their inherited privilege at any cost... a handful of anti-Castro Miami Cubans who all claim to have spent time in Castro’s jails for political reasons, and a big mass of pork-rind eating, truck nutz sporting, bitter sons of Jefferson Davis.

Barnes writes for the patricians with the inherited privilege. After all, that is the heart of all right-wing parties before they get taken over by their sociopathic allies and turn completely fascist. Like Barnes, Cheney has also aligned himself with Limbaugh. On CBS' Face The Nation today, when asked about Colin Powell's mild rebuke of Limbaugh's suicidal extremism, Cheney made it clear once again why he is the most loathed figure in American politics: "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd choose Rush Limbaugh," Cheney said when asked about whose vision of the GOP he'd side with. "My impression was that Colin was no longer a Republican."

Earlier today we took a look at the disintegration of Pakistan. What we didn't get into is the crucial role religious extremism has played in the collapse of civil society. If you believe-- have faith-- in God being on your side, you can do anything-- even murder women and children because... well GOD is on your side and that's what HE wants. And there are American politicians as eager to use narrowly-based religious bigotry as the Taliban are. You think I'm exaggerating? On Thursday a gaggle of far right extremists introduced a resolution (H. Con. Res 121) demanding that President Obama designate 2010 "The National Year of the Bible." So which imbciles never bothered reading the Constitution and know nothing about the history of intermingling religion and government? The resolution was the brainchild of Georgia racist and Know Nothing Paul Broun and is being co-sponsored by one of the most sickening lists of fellow demagogues and obstructionists: Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), John Carter (R-TX), Randy Forbes (R-VA), John Gingrey (R-GA), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Todd Akin (R-MO), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Mike Pence (R-IN), Louis Gohmert (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), and Kenny Marchant (R-TX).

Unfortunately they don't have remedial history classes for members of Congress. Instead they get all the info they need from Rush Limbaugh.