Category: Politics

The conservative brain: loving Springsteen’s Born in the USA, hating Fortunate Son

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Originally posted on RawStory

I have something to say to every single conservative who has criticized Bruce Springsteen for singing Fortunate Son but said nothing about his performance of his own classic Born in the U.S.A.: thank you!

No, really, thank you. By “you,” I mean everyone, from The Weekly Standard’s Ethan Epstein to the random tweeter, who was outraged when Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, and Zac Brown covered Creedence Clearwater Revival’s hit Fortunate Son during the Concert of Valor that took place Tuesday on the National Mall.  You see, you are wrong about Fortunate Son being an “inappropriate song.” As others, including Amanda Marcotte, have already explained, the song, which was written by John Fogerty, himself a vet of the Vietnam War, is not anti-soldier. It is anti-rich-politicians-sending-poor-people-to-die-kill-and-fight-their-wars-for-them. It is pro-soldier in that it wants soldiers to actually not be killed. Get it?

But the best part of your meltdown is that you said NOTHING about another song that Springsteen performed. The Boss actually wrote this one. And it’s called Born in the U.S.A. You see, if you think Born in the U.S.A. is unpatriotic, you’d be wrong, just like you’re wrong in your analysis of Fortunate Son. But you’d at least be consistent in that you would, once again, be confusing criticism of the government and elites with criticism of Americans.
Continue reading “The conservative brain: loving Springsteen’s Born in the USA, hating Fortunate Son” →

Clayton ‘rape victims should relax and enjoy it,’ Williams is funding TX Gov GOP nominee Greg Abbott

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greg abbott

Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate and current Attorney General Greg Abbott is already impressively anti-woman in his policies and statements. But now he gets to add this gem to his misogynist achievements: being bankrolled by Clayton Williams, the oil and gas tycoon who lost the governor’s race to Ann Richards and is famous for saying of rape “if it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”

But, as every man who makes inappropriate and offensive statements about rape is quick to remind us, the quote was just taken out of context. Once you see the context, you’ll be totes fine with it. Back in March of 1990, Williams, the president and CEO of Clayton Williams Energy, an oil and gas company based in Texas, who everyone predicted would win the governor’s race, was getting ready for a cattle roundup at his ranch in West Texas when he harmlessly compared the bad weather to… rape. Who hasn’t done that before? And Williams felt terrible remorse right away, offering the classic “I’m sorry if anyone’s offended” line, which isn’t an apology for what you did as much as it is an expression of pity for those stupid or sensitive enough to miss out on a great comedic moment.

He even explained why he made the statement he did: context! “That’s not a Republican women’s club that we were having this morning… It’s a working cow camp, a tough world where you can get kicked in the testicles if you’re not careful.” It’s a tough world, indeed, where you can get kicked in the testicles for failing to compare inclement meteorological conditions to rape and for failing to tell women how they should just go with the rape flow. OK. So, still not remorseful. But, later on, when asked if he was worried he had offended anyone, he said, “I’m not going to give you a serious answer. It wasn’t a serious deal. It wasn’t a serious statement.” Eventually, of course, he came around, with the same sincerity of the Mormon Church on ordaining Black priests, saying, ”I feel just terrible about this. I had no intention in my heart to hurt anyone, especially those women who have been traumatized by rape.”

Well, it turns out that Williams has donated $120,000 over the past 13 months to Abbott, who is running against Democrat state Senator Wendy Davis of Fort Worth. And it was revealed this week that he has also donated $15,000 donation to Houston state senator and GOP lieutenant governor nominee Dan Patrick, who is running against Democratic nominee Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio state senator. And what do Patrick and Abbott have in common? They are both running against women and they are both terrible on women’s issues. Both oppose abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Dan Patrick voted against giving funds to test a backlog of rape kits in Texas. And Abbott pays his female employees less, on average, than his male employees. Male employees earn an average of $60,200 a year working for Abbott, while women make $44,708.

Williams is so toxic that though he raised $300,000 for then presidential nominee John McCain in 2008, the Arizona Senator canceled a fundraiser and returned the money! But in Texas, he’s A.OK!

Originally posted on RawStory

LGBT people are not, actually, all billionaires who brunch 24/7

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Hardcore homophobes and playful pop culture often present the gays, especially gay men, as brunch-eating, artisanal cocktail swigging, shopping-spreeing, swinging singles with disposable income. Shockingly, this is a myth and not reality.

A new report from the Movement Advancement Project and Center for American Progress shatters the myth and reveals that LGBT actually are worse-off financially than their hetero brothers and sisters. For instance, while  39% of non-LGBT adults in the U.S. report they are thriving financially, only  29% of LGBT adults do. While 17% of non-LGBT people who live alone make less than $12,000 a year, 20.7% of LGBT people living alone earn less than $12,000. Transgender people are almost four times as likely to earn less than $10,000 than the rest of the population even though transgender people have much higher rates of college and graduate school education. Single LGBT people with children are three times more likely to be living near the poverty line than the rest of the population with children. And married or partnered LGBT parents are twice as likely to earn incomes close to the poverty line than married or partnered non-LGBT parents. Children raised by same-sex couples are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty than are children raised by married heterosexual couples.

And then, of course, there’s ye ole racism, which dovetails beautifully with homophobia. So, for instance, African Americans in same-sex couples are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as African Americans in married male-female relationships.

The study lays out the three main causes of the financial disadvantages faced by LGBT people:

1. Lack of protection from discrimination means that LGBT people can be fired, denied housing, and refused medically-necessary healthcare simply because they are LGBT. The financial penalty: LGBT people can struggle to find work, make less on the job, and have higher housing and medical costs than their non-LGBT peers. 2.Refusal to recognize LGBT families means that LGBT families are denied many of the same benefits available to non-LGBT families when it comes to health insurance, taxes, vital safety-net programs, and retirement planning. The financial penalty: LGBT families pay more for health insurance, taxes, legal assistance, and essential protection for their families in times of crisis. 3. Failure to adequately protect LGBT students means that LGBT people and their families often face a hostile, unsafe, and unwelcoming environment in local schools, as well as discrimination in accessing financial aid and other support. The financial penalty: LGBT young people and the children of LGBT parents are more likely to perform poorly in school and to face challenges pursuing postsecondary educational opportunities. This, in turn, can reduce their earnings over time, as well as their chances of having successful jobs and careers.

See the infographic of this information below. So, this is the terrible news. But the good news is that we know how to fix the problem. Pass anti-descrimination legislation. I know this seems terrible unjust to those who equate family values with forcing parents and their children to live in poverty. Oh well. They’ll have to get over that.

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Originally posted on RawStory

Why a bill outlawing forced sterilization had to be passed…in California…in 2014

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The good news is that forced sterilization is now illegal in California. The bad news is that the bill was necessary because up until now, coerced tubal ligations were happening.

Last Thursday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill which banned using sterilization as a form of birth control for female inmates in all jails, prisons, and detention centers. While the new law is a victory, it is a response to a tragedy and an outrage. As we covered last year, the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that 148 women had undergone tubal violations which violated prison rules between 2006 and 2010. A state audit from June of 2014 find that over a quarter of the procedures, at least 39, had been performed without the required consent. In 18 cases, the mandated waiting period after consent was violated.

Crystal Nguyen was an inmate at the Valley State Prison who worked in the prison’s infirmary in 2007. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not right,’ ” Nguyen, 28, recalls. “Do they think they’re animals, and they don’t want them to breed anymore?”

“As soon as he found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done.” Christina Cordero, 34, who was in prison for car theft, remembers being pressured by the prison doctor to undergo tubal ligation: “The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it… He made me feel like a bad mother if I didn’t do it.” So she got the procedure. But, Cordero adds that, “today, I wish I would have never had it done.”

Of course, the over 140 cases are just the most recent examples in a long history of forced sterilization of prisoners–in California and elsewhere in the US. Between 1909 and 1964 approximately 20,000 men and women, who were disproportionately of color, poor, disabled, mentally ill, and incarcerated, underwent forced sterilization in California. Though the practice was banned in 1979, it continued in prisons.

The law, which will go into affect January 1, outlaws any sterilizing operations, including tubal ligations and hysterectomies. In the case of life-threatening circumstances, inmates must undergo counseling from independent doctors not under contract with the prison. Local jails and state prisons will be required to keep track of and report the surgeries online. And employees who report violations or abuses will be protected from retaliation. Continue reading “Why a bill outlawing forced sterilization had to be passed…in California…in 2014” →

National Review hack wants to hang women who abort because sanctity of life

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It’s not every day that you see such a moving and consistent plea to respect the sanctity of life. But Sunday was one of those days. Because that’s when National Review “writer” Kevin Williamson stated that women who have abortions should be hanged. It all started when Williamson wrote a screed against Lena Dunham which was so catty that I’m forced to deduce that he holds her responsible for getting his show Boys, about a group of men who write for The National Review, bumped off of HBO. He both critiqued Dunham for being self-obsessed and assuming that people cared about her sex life while, at the very same time, proving her point that he does indeed obsess about her sex life.

Williamson started out his hysterical diary entry by calling Dunham “distinctly unappealing” and dismissing her recent article which is unabashedly pro-voting and pro-women’s rights (two things that Williamson can’t, apparently, stand) as “a half-assed listicle penned by a half-bright celebrity and published by a gang of abortion profiteers.”

Miss Dunham’s “all about me!” attitude toward the process of voting inevitably extends to the content of what she votes for, which is, in her telling, mostly about her sex life. Hammering down hard on the Caps Lock key, she writes: “The crazy and depressing truth is that there are people running for office right now who could actually affect your life. PARTICULARLY your sex life. PARTICULARLY if you’re a woman. Yup.”

Yup? Nope.

But, like Dan Savage himself says, it gets better. What happened next was that a very logical person on twitter, @LeveyIsLaw, pointed out the contradiction between Williamson’s whole “only someone who suffers from ‘all about me’ disease would think I care at all about your sex life. P.S. I care about your sex life, like, a lot,” argument:

This is strange: “We do not wish to be involved in your sex life” and a rant against abortion in the same article?

He then asked Williamson to flesh out his moral argument against abortion, tweeting, “Do you think it’s morally acceptable to kill doctors who are about to perform abortions? Should women who have abortions get life without parole? If your answer to either question is no, you don’t think abortion is murder.”

To this, Williamson responded “I have hanging more in mind.”

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And it just got better from there. Continue reading “National Review hack wants to hang women who abort because sanctity of life” →

Canada’s first national survey of sex workers shows most are satisfied with their jobs

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sex work is work
(Photo credit: Bertrand Langlois/Getty)

Canada’s conservative government is poised to pass a bill which would criminalize sex work. But a new national study disproves many of the paternalistic stereotypes and assumptions behind the legislation.

According to Canada’s Justice Minister Peter MacKay, Bill C-36, which aims to abolish sex work, is based on the fact that “the vast majority of those that sell sexual services do not do so by choice. We view the vast majority of those involved in selling sexual services as victims.” The proposed bill would punish not just those who buy the services but the alleged victims, as well. Punishing victims doesn’t exactly scream sound policy. But on top of that, the characterization of sex workers as victims is problematic, to say the least.

Canada’s first nation-wide survey of sex workers has some interesting findings the government should, but probably won’t, listen to. Over the five-year study, which was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, researchers interviewed 218 sex workers, 1,252 clients, 30 spouses or intimate partners of sex workers, 61 managers of escort or massage businesses, and 80 law enforcement officials in six cities throughout Canada. The study did not, however, look at undocumented sex workers or children, and probably captured neither the best nor the worst of the industry. As one of the study’s lead authors, Cecilia Benoit, explained, “If you think of the sex industry as a continuum, there are people over here who have a lot of control and make a lot of money, and you have people over here who are forced… Our study probably got people in the middle and towards the ends, but not at the extremes.”

Though the bill presents sex workers as victims, the study found that 82 percent of workers felt appropriately rewarded, 70 percent were satisfied with their jobs, and 68 percent felt they have good job security. According to Benoit, “Sex workers are average Canadians. They’re Caucasian, in their 30s and 40s, and have education and training outside of high school. Most of them don’t feel exploited, they don’t see buyers as oppressors…. They are people trying to do the best they can with the tools they have to live their lives.” Researcher  Mikael Jansson added, “They talk to us about the amount of control they have over their work situation… They have a lot more control over the timing of their work, the pace of their work than journalists.” And researcher Chris Atchison reported that, “What we’ve found from the data is when it comes to workers, clients and their interaction, sex workers set the terms and conditions of the service… Clients come to them and say ‘Here’s what I’m looking for.’ A sex worker then says ‘I’m either willing or unwilling to provide that.’” Continue reading “Canada’s first national survey of sex workers shows most are satisfied with their jobs” →

The sound of 310,000 people holding a moment of silence for climate change victims

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Photo by Matthew Weinstein
Photo by Matthew Weinstein

Though you would have no idea by watching the Sunday “News” shows, an estimated 310,000 people gathered on Sunday in New York City for the People’s Climate March. The event, which was one of the over 150 protests held around the world, was the largest mobilization against climate change ever held. I attended the event, which was inspiring in its energy and diversity. But by far the most moving moment was when, at 12:58, people held a moment of silence which was followed by a wave of sound. I captured it, rather crappily, on my camera phone. Photographer, Brooklyn For Peace organizer, and fellow Camp Kinderland alum Matthew Weinstein described the auditory experience as,

a very powerful moment of silence for those who have fallen victim to climate change in poor communities around the world. An amazing hush came over the hundreds of thousands assembled. Then a minute or so later — a huge roar of the crowd traveled like a wave up the very many streets of assembled marchers – a noise to help wake and shake up the political leaders meeting at the UN next week.

I got chills when the noise started and I couldn’t tell what it was at first because I had never heard anything like it. But this is what democracy, and 310,000 people making noise, sounds like.

Originally posted on RawStory

Adulterous Rep. Mark Sanford breaks up with fiancee via Facebook post with 10 god references

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Mark Sanford screenshot

WWJD? What Would Jesus Do? Well, according to former Governor and current Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.,) he would let his fiancee know it was over through a Facebook post heavily steeped in Christianity. He cites Jesus once, Christ twice, prayer twice, and “God” five times.

You may remember Mark Sanford from back in June of 2009 when, as governor,  he went AWOL for six days. No biggie. His spokesman stated he had gone to hike the Appalachian Trail. But that wasn’t true. Or the spokesman is a big fan of sexual innuendo. Either way, it turned out Sanford had redeemed his frequent flyer miles and flown to Buenos Aires to spend some much-needed quality time away from his wife and children and with his girlfriend, journalist Maria Belen Chapur.

The fallout for Sanford wasn’t bad. Because only democrats get in trouble for infidelity even though they don’t legislate people’s love or sex lives, he remained governor. In 2012 the by now divorced Lothario became engaged to Chapur and in 2013 he won a special election for Tim Scott’s seat in congress.

But on Friday, Sanford’s Facebook friends learned there was trouble in paradise. In an oversharing, TMI and yet self-aware post, Sanford writes, “I apologize for the length of this post, but given the gravity of the issue at hand when I sat down to write late last night a long list of things came to my mind.” He goes on to explain how his decision was grounded in Christianity, history and conflict resolution: Continue reading “Adulterous Rep. Mark Sanford breaks up with fiancee via Facebook post with 10 god references” →

The other September 11th: Chile, Cuba and the United States

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Today is September 11th. As almost everyone in the world knows, on this day, thirteen years ago, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, tragically killing nearly 3,000 people. The aftermath of these attacks had national ramifications– racial profiling, stifling of dissent, squashing of civil liberties– as well as international ones– an invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with September 11th, and Afghanistan.

​In the United States, we mourn those that were lost on September 11.  However, many of us are unaware that for Chileans, September 11th had become a day of tragedy decades before.  In 1973, the Chilean army flew fighter jets over Santiago and bombed its own presidential palace during a coup to overthrow its own legal elected president, Salvador Allende.​

Augusto Pinochet, who Allende had appointed to Commander-in-Chief, seized power, put all political parties “in recess” and killed, tortured, disappeared and forced into exile thousands of Chileans. He would remained in power until 1990.

The United States played a significant role in both the coup and the dictatorship. In his book Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability,  Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Chile documentation project at the National Security Archive, uses archival material and declassified documents to expose the complicity of the United States:

  • eight days after Allende’s election [in 1970], Kissinger initiated discussion on the telephone with CIA director Richard Helm’s about a preemptive coup in Chile. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger declared…

  •  Three days before President Nixon, in a 15-minute meeting that included Kissinger, ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream,” and named Kissinger as the supervisor of the covert efforts to keep Allende from being inaugurated.

  • Kissinger ignored a recommendation from his top deputy on the NSC, Viron Vaky… against covert action to undermine Allende… Vaky wrote a memo to Kissinger arguing that coup plotting would lead to “widespread violence and even insurrection.” He also argued that such a policy was immoral: “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”

  • After U.S. covert operations, which led to the assassination of Chilean Commander in Chief of the Armed forces General Rene Schneider, failed to stop Allende’s inauguration on November 4, 1970, Kissinger lobbied President Nixon to … regime change in Chile…[:] “the election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere” and “your decision as to what to do about it may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will make this year.”

  • Not only were a billion dollars of U.S. investments at stake, Kissinger reported, but what he called “the insidious model effect” of his democratic election. There was no way for the U.S. to deny Allende’s legitimacy, Kissinger noted, and if he succeeded in peacefully reallocating resources in Chile in a socialist direction, other countries might follow suit. “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on — and even precedent value for — other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.”The next day Nixon made it clear to the entire National Security Council that the policy would be to bring Allende down. “Our main concern,” he stated, “is the prospect that he can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success.”

  • In the days following the coup, Kissinger ignored the concerns of his top State Department aides about the massive repression by the new military regime. He sent secret instructions to his ambassador to convey to Pinochet “our strongest desires to cooperate closely and establish firm basis for cordial and most constructive relationship.” When his assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs asked him what to tell Congress about the reports of hundreds of people being killed in the days following the coup, he issued these instructions: “I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was.” The United States assisted the Pinochet regime in consolidating, through economic and military aide, diplomatic support and CIA assistance in creating Chile’s infamous secret police agency, DINA.

  • At the height of Pinochet’s repression in 1975, Secretary Kissinger met with the Chilean foreign minister, Admiral Patricio Carvajal… Kissinger opened the meeting by disparaging his own staff for putting the issue of human rights on the agenda. “I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights…The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.”

  • As Secretary Kissinger prepared to meet General Augusto Pinochet in Santiago in June 1976, his top deputy for Latin America, William D. Rogers, advised him make human rights central to U.S.-Chilean relations and to press the dictator to “improve human rights practices.” Instead… Kissinger told Pinochet that his regime was a victim of leftist propaganda on human rights. “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here… We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende.”

And this week, the Cuban people can mourn another brutal blunder in U.S. policy and fear mongering.  Well, my fellow Americans, if you’ve been sleeping particularly well the last few days, it’s probably because on September 9th, President Obama made the world and our nation safe by extending the over 50 year-long embargo on Cuba for yet another year. Continue reading “The other September 11th: Chile, Cuba and the United States” →

Video: Governor Cuomo fears for his life, screams out for Mayor de Blasio

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HUD_Secretary_Andrew_Cuomo

Some people like to face their fears. Others like to ignore them and pretend they’re not there. And now we know that Governor Andrew Cuomo definitely belongs in the second camp.

We knew that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) was too afraid to debate his primary challenger, Progressive Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout. But we didn’t know that he was so afraid of her, her mere presence causes him to  shut down, pretends she’s not there, and screams for help.

Until this weekend… when Teachout threatened Cuomo with an attempted “hello,” at New York City’s Labor Day Parade on Saturday.

NYTrue.com captured the video of the terribly scary exchange. Here’s a blow by blow.

Teachout and her running mate Tim Wu menacingly approach Cuomo and his running Kathy Hochul.

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Cuomo’s campaign manager, Joe Pecoco, protects the Cuomo and Hochul, putting his life on the line as he bravely places his body between Teachout and Cuomo.

Teachout harasses the Governor and his staff, shouting aggressive, inappropriate things like, “Hi, how we doing?”

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Unable to get through, Tenacious T, doggedly pursues her victims through another route. Understandably scared for their lives,  Cuomo and Hochul turn away from Teachout.

Teachout then assaults Hochul with a brutally light tap on the arm. Continue reading “Video: Governor Cuomo fears for his life, screams out for Mayor de Blasio” →