Michele Carlo

Michele Carlo is a writer/performer and comedic storyteller who has lived in four of the five boroughs of New York City and remembers when a slice of pizza cost fifty cents. Her stories have been published in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood’s Lost & Found: Stories From New York, Chicken Soup For The Latino Soul and SMITH Magazine. Her memoir, Fish Out of Agua: My life on neither side of the (subway) tracks, was published this summer by Citadel Press.

Rachel Kramer Bussel

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author, editor, blogger and reading series host. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a former sex columnist for The Village Voice. She’s edited over 30 anthologies, including the kink-themed Spanked, Bottoms Up, Yes, Sir, Yes, Ma'am, He's on Top, She's on Top, Rubber Sex as well as Fast Girls, Orgasmic, Peep Show, The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Tasting Him, Tasting Her, and the non-fiction Best Sex Writing series. Her books won 3 2009 Independent Publisher Awards. Her writing been published in publications such as Clean Sheets, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Tango, The Village Voice, and Time Out New York, and in over 100 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006. Rachel conducts nationwide readings and erotic writing workshops. She has hosted In The Flesh since October 2005.

Seth Kushner

Seth Kushner shoots portraits of celebrity-types for such publications The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, L'Uomo Vogue and others. Seth's first book, The Brooklynites, was published by powerHouse Books in 2007. His next book, Leaping Tall Buildings, will be released in 2101

Talk about the play of the week?

I'm not big into matters like football but I can enjoy a clever play. And this is astoundingly simple, yet smart, yet hilarious.

And that reminds me of the hilarious football scene in Glee.

Can't scriptwriters do a little research?

I find it annoying when scriptwriters don't bother to check out basic facts. It is one thing to take license with historical facts for the sake of a story, but it is quite another when they make absurd errors.

Normally I wouldn't comment on such things but recently I had two different television shows running while working on the computer. And both of them made silly errors.

Both are shows that I enjoy quite a bit, which is doubly disappointing. In "Mr. Monk and the Marathon Man" a woman is murdered but the prime suspect was in a marathon race at the time of the death and his computer chip proves he passed one check-point after another. One of the other runners is a supposed famed marathon runner of the past named Tonday, from Africa. Tonday uses the word "amandla" with Monk. Monk is then told this means "courage." But amandla does NOT mean courage, it means "power," which is quite different.

In a rerun of Bones, "The Man in the Fallout Shelter" a body from the 1950s is discovered in a fallout shelter. Zack cuts into the bones and it releases spores into the air which set off the bio-hazard alarm. Because Zack and Hodges were exposed to the spores, and the rest of the team were exposed to Zack and Hodges, they are all quarantined together over Christmas. And, while there is much to say for this episode there is a huge flaw in the story.

The fungus to which Hodges and Zack were exposed is Coccidioides immitis, a fungus that causes Valley Fever. One might ask how a man in a Washington, DC fallout shelter had been exposed to Valley Fever, given that it is a fungus endemic in the American South West and not the DC area. As the show goes along it becomes clear that the victim was from Oklahoma. But Oklahoma tends not to be a location for the fungus.

But that is relatively small in importance. We can pretend he was exposed someplace else. The major problem is that Valley Fever is NOT contagious. No one would be put into quarantine because of exposure to the fungus.

That's a good thing too since it is generally assumed that about half of all people in places like California, Arizona and other nearby states have been exposed to the fungus.

At one point of the episode Dr. Brennan sneezes and her FBI partner, Seeley Booth and Brennan both get horrified looks on their faces. Sneezing is not one of the symptoms of Valley Fever.

These are small things, but to quote a proverb, "the little foxes spoil the vine."

Bullying leads to another kid's death.

Brandon Bitner was just 14-years-old when he intentionally ran in front of a semi truck. He left a suicide note at his home and disappeared in the middle of the night. His family discovered his absence at 3:45 am and were notified of his death at 4:30 am.

Bitner left his home in the middle of the night and walked 13 miles before taking action.

Friends of Bitner say he was bullied at school for being gay. The school, says they know of no such incidents, but Bitner's friends report a regular problem.

What compounds the problem is that the only church Bitner was reported to attend was a fundamentalist church with anti-gay policies. The youth pastor at the church says that kids in the church are encouraged to "reach out to the hurting" but doesn't say what happens after that. The problem is that fundamentalists insist that being gay is evil and sinful and that such "hurting" kids must change, something that doesn't seem possible. Fundamentalists churches reaching out to gay kids is NOT a good thing. It is just theological bullying with a saccharine lilt to the voice, when it isn't screeching hell fire and brimstone.

To illustrate this point the New York Times just ran an article on November 6th reporting how anti-bullying efforts in government schools face fierce opposition from—who else?—fundamentalist churches. When Montana introduce lessons on tolerance and sexuality the fundamentalists went to war, along with help from the Big Sky Tea Party. Rick DeMato, a fundamentalist minister from the misnamed Liberty Baptist Church said: "We do not want the minds of our children to be polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society."

DeMato says they are against bullying but doesn't define how he interprets bullying. But he says all anti-bullying campaigns involving gay students has to be excluded because "the Bible says very clearly that homosexuality is wrong and Christians don't want the schools to teach subjects that are repulsive to their values." Presumably, since DeMato believes state schools are supposed to teach according to a fundamentalist curriculum he would be happy if gay kids were told they were "repulsive," but that bullying is wrong. Of course, most bullying at the schools that is directed at gay kids is more in line with constant verbal taunts quite similar to how DeMato talks.

The right-wing fundamentalist group Focus on the Family has also come out in opposition to anti-bullying efforts in the schools claiming they are "promoting homosexual lessons."

The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—those were the people who started their own denomination precisely because they believed God wanted them to own other human beings as slave—says that "gay activists accuse conservative Christians of homophobia" but "they are wrong." He says their anti-gay views "is not rooted in fear, but in faithfulness to the Bible—and faithfulness means telling the truth." I have always opposed using the word homophobia precisely for that reason. Bigotry is not fear, it is is hate. I do not call such people homophobic because they don't have a fear the way many people have a fear of heights. They hold views that require them to hate a person, and hate is not the same thing as fear.

If anything I believe the term "homophobia" lets them off too easily.

Focus on the Family insists that the school should just say it is against bullying and NEVER mention the fact that gay students are disproportionately targeted for such hatred. They want the schools to only discuss "the wrong actions of the bully—not on the bully's perceived thoughts or motivations." Please note that what this means is that the school would not be allowed to take preventative measures regarding bullying by promoting tolerance of all students. To do that would be to discuss motivations. Focusing on actions requires actions to have already taken place. In other words, Focus on the Family prefers schools only do something about bullying AFTER it was already done.

Consider this policy and our latest victim of the bullies: Brandon Bitner. Now that Bitner is dead the school is aware that he was bullied and the school could take action against the bullies but must not discuss the motivation for the bullying. However, prior to the actual death of Brandon the school would not be able to discuss motivations that cause kids to bully one another. They would be unable to take action to prevent bullying, only respond to it after the fact.

Let me be blunt, as if I ever fail at that: the reason that fundamentalists don't want the motives of bullies discussed is because it requires one to talk about the rabid anti-gay prejudices that permeate the fundamentalist sub-culture.

Many fundamentalists have actually resorted to arguing that the disproportionate number of gay teens killing themselves is the result of too much tolerance of gay people. Tony Perkins of the antigay Family Research Council says "there's no empirical evidence for the claim that society's disapproval of homosexuality causes the mental health problems (including depression and suicide) that are found among homosexuals."

Most Americans disagree. A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute was released at the end of October. That poll reported that 72% of the public think that religious messages regarding homosexuality encourage "negative views" regarding gay people and 65% said there is a connection between those views and the suicides of gay kids.

The one group most satisfied with their churches attitudes toward gay people are fundamentalist
Christians.

Only 7% of Americans believe that their are positive messages coming from the churches regarding gay people, 43% say the message is negative and the rest don't know or say it is not discussed. Asked to assign grades to how well the churches deal with the issue only 16% give the churches an A or B grade, while 42% give them a D or F. Thirty percent give them a C grade.

Asked if they believe anti-gay messages in the church contribute to gay teen suicide rates one third say the message contributes "a lot," while another third say it makes some contribution. Only 21% say it has no impact.

The facts are that anti-gay messages do send messages to gay kids and to the bullies. That is what they are meant to do. Fundamentalists repeatedly say they wish all gay people would go back into the closet so that no one had to see them or deal with them. Some, such a major leaders of the old Moral Majority, openly called for incarcerating gay people and publicly supported the death penalty for being gay. The reason fundamentalists don't want motivations for bullying discussed is because they are a major source for providing those motivations.

Religion and the inequality of rights.

My view tends to go along the lines that all people should have the same legal rights as everyone else unless there is a damn good reason otherwise.

But I keep running into religious exemptions to this rule. If you don't show up for work when scheduled you can be fired, unless you claim that a deity has ordered you to do something else that day. In those cases the employer has to accommodate your claim to divine revelation. Now my view is that employers ought to have the right to NOT hire individuals who will inflict higher costs on them by demanding special considerations due to their beliefs. I would honor a religious employer's right to not hire gay people just as I would honor the right of a gay establishment to refuse to hire born-again Christians.

I ran across another very interesting legal right to discriminate which is granted to religious people only.

According to the Federal Communication Commission any radio or television station is strictly banned from discriminating "in employment... because of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex." Plain and simple, if you are an atheist and don't want to hire a fundamentalist then you are forbidden from indulging your own preferences. You may NOT discriminate against the Christian.

But, if the shoe were on the other foot, and you were an atheist seeking employment, a Christian station is explicitly granted permission to discriminate against you. "Religious radio broadcasters may establish religious belief and affiliation as a job qualification for all station employees."

So, the same law that forbids secular stations from refusing to hire Christian employees grants Christian stations the right to refuse to hire secular employees. Next time some Right-wing religious nut whines to you about how they are being persecuted by the nasty secularists ask them about this federal law which grants them legal rights denied to non-religious people.

Web site layout?

I was asked by friend with a new libertarian oriented think tank to help solicit a volunteer to put a basic web site up for them. The new organization is operating on a shoe-string and is meant to promote civil dialogue between the left and libertarians and to promote civil liberties from a libertarian perspective. Where other think tanks emphasize economics and minor in social issues, this organization wants to promote social issues based most of all.

If you are willing to put in a few hours to get the basic site up and running just leave contact details in the comment section. These remain invisible to the public unless I "approve" them, which won't happen. But I will pass the information on so that these people can contact you.

Happy Halloween: God hates you.

As way of preface I want to mention something that happened to me three years ago. I was pulling into a parking space at a restaurant. In the space next to me was another SUV with a mother and her young son: perhaps 8. They were getting out of the car and going into the restaurant about the same time I was.

As the boy and mother walked past the mother made some sarcastic sounding remark that she seemed to think was funny about her son. "Doesn't he have a cute purse?" I saw the boy was carrying a purse. My impression was that it was his mother's purse and he was carrying into the restaurant for her. Perhaps not, I couldn't tell and wasn't very concerned.

The mother seemed determined to drag me into her game and turned to me and said: "So what do you think about him carrying a purse?" Now, I operate on the assumption that if you don't want a truthful answer don't ask me a question. I will say precisely what I believe if asked.

In this case I was a bit peeved with the mother who I thought was being cruel. So I responded, with a firm look: "I think it's no one's business but his own and if that is what he wants to do then he has the right to do it." That was not the response she expected and she seemed surprised and then said: "Well, I guess you're right." She was then smart enough to shut up and move on before I had a chance to tell her that mothers shouldn't bully kids either—not even their own.

That brings me to the case of a blogging mother who goes by the nom de blog of Nerdy Apple Bottom. She is 35 years old and has three kids and is married to a police detective. And this Halloween her 5 year old son, nicknamed Boo, said that for Halloween he wanted to dress up as Daphne from the cartoon Scooby Doo. She was alright with that, after all, it is Halloween.

But Boo attended a preschool run by a local church and that seems to be where the problem was. She noted that Boo was getting nervous that some people might make fun of him. She asked: "Seriously, who would make fund of a child in a costume?" I've seem some awful costumes on kids and have never stooped to ridiculing them. Kids are off limits for that sort of treatment, in my books, completely off limits.

The kids showed up at school in costume and had a small party and then reverted to their street clothes for the rest of the day. When "Nerdy" and Boo went into the school some of the good Christian mothers descended like hungry vultures spotting a carcass. In my experience I can only say: "How Christian of them." And mean it.

The kids were fine, only their mothers lacked the maturity required to deal with it. Nerdy describes the situation:

Two mothers went wide-eyed and made faces as if they smelled decomp. And I realize that my son is seeing the same thing I am. So I say, “Doesn’t he look great?” And Mom A says in disgust, “Did he ask to be that?!” I say that he sure did as Halloween is the time of year that you can be whatever it is that you want to be. They continue with their nosy, probing questions as to how that was an option and didn’t I try to talk him out of it. Mom B mostly just stood there in shock and dismay.

And then Mom C approaches. She had been in the main room, saw us walk in, and followed us down the hall to let me know her thoughts. And they were that I should never have ‘allowed’ this and thank God it wasn’t next year when he was in Kindergarten since I would have had to put my foot down and ‘forbidden’ it. To which I calmly replied that I would do no such thing and couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. She continued on and on about how mean children could be and how he would be ridiculed.

My response to that: The only people that seem to have a problem with it is their mothers.

Nerdy had an appropriate response—well verbal response, perhaps the most appropriate would have been decking the stupid woman but the kids were watching.

But here’s the point, it is none of your damn business.

If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to ‘make’ him gay then you are an idiot. Firstly, what a ridiculous concept. Secondly, if my son is gay, OK. I will love him no less. Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off.

Now remember these Christian mothers were doing this in front of the boy. They were basically bullying a 5-year-old over his choice of Halloween costumes, and trying to do the same to this mother. Nerdy wrote: "IT IS NOT OK TO BULLY. Even if you wrap it up in a bow and call it 'concern.' Those women were trying to bully me. And my son. MY son."

To argue that children could be mean, in this case, was absurd. It was the Christian mothers who were being mean, but they worship someone who promises to torture the vast majority of humanity for eternity. Can children be mean? Yes, but where do these mothers think the kids learn to act that way? Perhaps from the cruel example set by their own mothers.

Nerdy said that she has no idea if her son will be gay or not but made it clear that she will love him just the same either way. Her job, she says, is not to stifle the man he will become but make sure he is a good person. Of course, if dressing in drag at Halloween would make people gay then apparently there are more gay men around than the world will ever realize.

Most the comments left at the blog were supportive of Nerdy and praising her for her mothering skills. But a few self-described Christians just "had" to preach their gospel of intolerance. Kelly wanted Nerdy to know: "The Bible condemns homosexuality and cross-dressing VERY clearly and I can expect that from the world, but not from Christians. The reasons why Christians are against homosexuality is NOT because we 'hate' homosexuals, but quite the opposite." Sure, dear, I believe that, sort of the way the Nazis loved the Jews to death. Of course Kelly doesn't have to torment people, she has an imaginary friend who will do it for her: "I believe in hell and know it is a place of eternal torment. The Bible is clear on that and what takes you there." Apparently dressing up as Daphne for Halloween is a good enough reason for Jehovah to torture someone for eternity. Wow!

Others accused Nerdy of "whoring out" her son. One said: "This is such an attention whore move." Another offered the detailed argument of: "You're an idiot." I had more that I wanted to mention, especially a particularly silly comment from one "babybooty." But the blog doesn't seem to show all the comments in any particular order. The comment was there and I was starting to take notes when the power went out. When it came back I returned to the site and have spent 30 minutes looking for that silly comment to finish this piece and can't find it.

UPDATE: After writing this I was shocked to see exactly how people have responded. People have accused this mother of child abuse, of all things, because she stood up for her son when some stupid adults were upset with his Halloween costume. CNN brought on some clinical psychologist, Jeff Gardere, who went as far as to say that "the worst nightmare" of any parent is to "fathom that their child may be gay." The worst nightmare! Shit. Is he kidding? I suspect his mother was worried her son might turn out to be an asswipe. If she was, it was with good reason.



He may be trying to be supportive but his comment that this is the worst nightmare of a parent is absurd.

Some busybody "child" advocacy group in the UK voiced an opinion saying that the blog post was a "troubling and disturbing precedent." They claim the mother has an adult agenda and is imposing it on her kid.

Get some perspective. The mother posted on her blog which was read by very few people, mostly friends. She shares her life with those friends via the blog. This one posting went viral but we have no evidence she intended for that to happen. In fact she was quite surprised by it.

People have argued that boy will be humiliated in years to come by it. Well, I have a photo of me as a child in an ROTC uniform because the school I attended had an ROTC program--they even taught us how to shoot at the school's firing range. I hate that photo.

Many, like this psychologist, seem to think the mother "outed" her young son. Absurd. She said: "My son is gay. Or he's not." She was responding to the hysteria that dressing this way will turn him gay—something people actually said to her in the comments section of her blog.

And while I like Steve Forbes as a person, and he was always pleasant with me, a commentator at his magazine's website is just off the wall. The Forbes blogger, Caroline Howard, calls this "Bad Mommy Blogging." She distorts what Nerdy wrote and claims "she convinced her son to don a costume he wasn't comfortable wearing."

Actually the boy became worried that some kids might ridicule him and she told him that she didn't think they would do that over a Halloween costume. She was actually right. The kids were fine with it but the mothers were the vultures. Howard seems to be of the opinion that blogging about one's children invades their privacy and is off limits and that there was a political agenda at work here. Odd they never say that when the Republican "family" candidate drags his kids out to the podium to display them before the public. Nerdy didn't drag her kid into the spotlight, she didn't expect the spotlight to be turned on at all.

As for those political candidates using their kids, one such politician that I knew dragged her whole family in for a photo for a campaign brochure that was mailed around the country. She gave me a copy of it and I had to chuckle. Apparently no one noticed that her teenage son was sitting with the family with his middle finger displaying his own view about the whole thing.

Tough luck Chuck or why its hard to go into business

Our friends at the Institute for Justice put out this little video to illustrate the impediments that local governments put in the way of people wanting to go into business. It is worth a few minutes of your time.

The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto investigated how government regulations in Peru kept people poor. He tracked the steps necessary to open a business and had teams of people going through the process. It literally took full time work, for over a year, to register just one business legally. The result was that most businesses operated illegally and were frozen out of capital markets as a result. This was true, not only of businesses, but of property rights as well.

One of the hallmarks of a third world country is how difficult these governments make it to open businesses legally. The regulatory maze is one geared to those who are well off and educated. It costs a lot of money to maneuver that labyrinth of regulations and it is not cheap. Regulations thus tend to weed out out the poor and least educated, who often make great entrepreneurs regardless of those factors.

The rise of the regulatory state has impacted the poorest, most vulnerable members of society the most. Any regulation can be handled if you are wealthy enough, which is one reason that Big Business has consistently promoted candidates that want to regulate markets. Regulations can be manipulated so that they are anti-competitive and transfer market share, and thus wealth, to the big players in the field.

When my grandmother was a girl anyone who wanted to start a business could build a handcart, buy some products and start hawking their goods. The big department stores, using their political clout, put a stop to that through regulations which the politicians claimed were necessary to protect the public.

Consider immigratin regulations: my great-great-grandfather Jules Pepin (1838-1898) migrated to Chicago with his brother-in-law Joseph Bernard. Uncle Joe was 16-years-old when he walked to the US to join the Union troops because of his desire to set the slaves free. He returned to Quebec and with Jules came back to the U.S. to settle permanently. My great-grandfather Axel Hansson (1865-1955)

Similarly when my great-great grandfather Jules Pepin (1838-1898) left Montreal to walk to the U.S. to join the cause of Abolitionism that was all he had to do: walk into the country. Another great-grandfather, Axel Hansson (1865-1955), simply boarded a ship in Sweden and came to America. The process was simple and many of the poorest people of the world, at least those with ambition, came to this country. Some like Jules and Joe just walked, others like Axel sailed. But they had no regulatory maze blocking their way. And these are the people who made America great.

Now such people are kept out. Sure there is a "legal" means of immigrating, provided you have lots of money and sufficient education to get through the process. The process prevents those who would most benefit from immigration from doing so. The fact is that when our ancestors "legally" immigrated they did so because there wasn't a regulatory wall preventing it. Now there is just such a wall and that is why those looking for work have to sneak in. The legal options were closed off to them. Regulations benefit the rich, the well-off and the educated.

This is one of the most important things I wish my friend on the Left would understand. The regulatory state is one that transfers rights and wealth from the poorest sectors of the economy to the wealthiest—not the other way around.

Science saved my soul

This is a fascinating video of about 15 minutes. It is something I agree with entirely.

And then, for a rather different take on the same thing.

Why Obama Should Love the Tea Party.

Obama should get down on his knees and thank the powers that don't exist for the Tea Party movement. Obama was leading the Democrats into a slaughter. He did as much harm to the Democrats as Dubya did to the Republicans in the last election.

It was clear all along that the Republicans would make substantial gains in the House. As bad as that would be for Obama, it would be absolutely disastrous if he lost the Senate to the Republicans as well.

But, out of nowhere, the Tea Party came riding in on their extremely white horse (all the brown horses were arrested and deported) to save the president's ass.

Let us recount exactly how the Tea Party rescued Obama from his self-brewed disaster.

As things stand, as I write this, the Democrats will retain control of the Senate 51-49. All they needed was to lose two more seats and the Republicans would be in charge there.

So why didn't the Republicans pick up these seats?

Start in Delaware where Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell knocked Mike Castle out of the race in the primary. This was widely seen as a safe seat for Castle, who ought to have won rather easily. But O'Donnell was the sort of Religious-right loons that are attracted to the Tea Party like moths to a flame. Her views were simply too extreme for the voters to stomach. So what probably would have been a win for Mike Castle was easily turned into a defeat for Christine O'Donnell. It appears that she will lose the race by 16 points, a landslide defeat in most cases. O'Donnell moved a fairly safe Republican seat to the Democrats.

Now move to Nevada where Senate majority leader Harry Reid was fighting for his life. Sharron Angle was perhaps the most extreme of the Republican Tea Party types. Reid was in big trouble and his seat was a strong pick-up opportunity for the Republicans. But Angle's campaign was just too extreme and Reid won with a 5 point margin. That was much better than it ought to have been.

Those two seats alone gave the Democrats the Senate. But I suspect there is more at play still.

It appears to me that the Tea Party candidates had a direct impact on the California race. Barbara Boxer was in trouble. She was so closely tied to Obama that she was in trouble. It would have been a good thing had she lost, in my opinion.

Carly Fiorina ran against Boxer but she is going down to defeat. Fiorina was the victim of a vicious smear campaign by Boxer, and it worked. And the smear that seemed most effective was Boxer's linking Fiorina to "extreme" positions. Californians were skeptical of the Tea Party movement and to extreme Right positions. Linking Fiorina to "extremism" was effective. I won't say it scared people into Boxer's camp. But what it did do was give Democrats a reason to vote.

People in this election did NOT vote for anyone. They voted AGAINST someone. For Boxer to win she needed to give Democrats a reason to come out and vote against Fiorina. The "too extreme for California" smear was the means of doing that. There were enough, very extreme Tea Party Republicans running, and saying monstrous things, that the "too extreme" campaign resonated with many California voters and Boxer benefitted from that. Fiorina was not a Tea Party candidate and Boxer succeeded by making it appear as if she were.

Is Obama a Keynesian?

I love how this so quickly shows that the Tea Party doesn't have a monopoly on morons.

This reminds of the time Steve Allan went into the streets of New York, in the 1960s and did man on the street interviews asking people if they would consider voting for an admitted heterosexual. I love the woman who responded: "Oh, no, I could never vote for one of them." Hilarious.

The bad news, however, is that today is election day. Unfortunately one way or another one of the candidates will win. Sorry.

Obama, are you f.cking paying attention?

My heart goes out to this couple. I know how painful it must be for this to happen to them because the federal government refuses to recognize gay marriages, even when the couples are married in those states that recognize these relationships.

The Feds can stop the deportations but Obama doesn't care about gay couples. Surely the gay community has woken up to that fact. The man is all talk and no action.

Thoughts on the election (yawn).

I realize I've really not blogged anything about the election in general. Perhaps that is because there is nothing to get excited about—absolutely nothing.

Obama has alienated a huge percentage of voters. Even those individuals who are voting Democrat aren't excited about the man. He has failed to perform almost completely in any area where his campaign promises were good and decent. Where he promised bad things he has delivered and then some. This blogger considers Obama worse than President Shrub, and that says a lot.

Just as Geogie Jr. horrified the majority of voters and drove them into the Democratic camp last time around, Obama is driving them right back to the Republicans. Yet, the voters are not happy with the Republicans which doesn't mean they are happy with the Republicans either. And believe me, the system is so rigged by all this so-called "campaign finance reform" and other election laws that it is virtually impossible for anyone to challenge the two-party duopoly. Given how each screws over the public for special interests we may as well assume we live in a one-party state. Regardless of which party is in the White House the occupant of that building will be more like Mugabe than like Jefferson.

The one alleged ray of hope, for less intrusive government, was supposed to be the misnamed Tea Party. But look at the sort of creeps that are considered the leading TP candidates: Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Carl Paladino, Ken Buck, Joel Miller or even Randal Paul.

Not a one of them actually wants to get government intrusion into the personal lives of people reduced. If anything these clowns want more religion-based policies to control how you live your life. We were told that the Tea Party had a "libertarian" bent to it. Right, these guys were so libertarian (NOT) that they managed to make Wayne Root even look libertarian in comparison—and believe me, Root is no libertarian.

Angel, O'Donnell and Paladino are complete whackjobs, but then so is Miller. Randal Paul is just another power-hungry politicians who sees principles as bargaining chips, something that can be traded away when power is at stake. He is as bad as his father, on those issues where Daddy Paul is bad, and where Daddy Paul is good, junior falls to perform. Daddy went over to the lunatic Religious-Right some years ago and Randal is sucking up to these theocratic creeps even more. Randal will win, in my opinion, but then his opponent actually managed to look ever more crazed with his "aqua Buddha" commercials.

My guess is that the Tea Party candidates won't do as well as people assume they will. And I actually think they gave the Democrats more than they took from them. People are disgusted with the fake in the White House and his party but the Tea Party fringes are making a lot of voters think twice about voting Republican.

Certainly the Republicans had a shoo-in seat in Delaware before Christine O'Donnell won the Republican nomination. What was a safe Republican seat looks to me as one that the Democrats will pick up. The Democrat, Chris Coons, has had a steady and healthy lead over O'Donnell from the beginning.

California's Barbara Boxer was vulnerable, and with good reason. Sure the Democrats have been advertising heavily against Republican Carly Fiorina. But from what I've seen of the ads, which have been pretty brutal and, in my opinion, dishonest, the most effective strategy the Democrats have is the Tea Party. They are trying to paint Fiorina as "too extreme for California." But this "too extreme" campaign is one the Democrats are playing around the country.

They are doing so because the Tea Party types that did win Republican nominations are actually rather extreme whackjobs. The TP gave the Democrats about the only strategy that would work for them in this election.

Face it, the Democrats can't run on keeping campaign promises. The one big promise they kept, the take-over of health care, is the one that has voters infuriated. And the Democrats don't want to bring up campaign promises anyway—since they did so badly on them. Consider various reports that gay voters are now more likely to refuse to vote than ever before because Obama has talked like Lady Gaga but performed like Georgia Jr. on issues that concern the gay community. Given how bigoted the Republicans have been regarding gays, this constituency ought to be safely Democratic. Obama has been so miserable on those issues that he alienated the most secure voting block the Democrats had outside of black voters. Only the hard-core, brain-dead Obamatrons continue to make excuses for the man in this area.

The Tea Party types are scary and certainly not advocates of small government by any means. They are the worst elements in the Republican Party, not the best. About the best Republican around is Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. I believe Johnson is fundamentally a libertarian—more so that Ron Paul for sure. I've questioned him and listened to him carefully. Even Jon Stewart, when interviewing Johnson, said, "But you're a libertarian?" Johnson smiled and said: "You think!"

I saw Johnson at a huge Tea Party rally trying to interest these Know-Nothings with his libertarian message. The response he got was deadly silence. What did get them salivating, and then foaming at the mouth, was anyone who got up and bashed Mexicans. I swear a heavy insult directed at brown people gave many in that Tea Party crowd the first orgasm they had in about six decades. Just the thought of it sends shivers down my spine. There is one good thing I can say about the Tea Party types I saw: the average age was just shy of death. A good number of them would be lucky to make until Tuesday.

Yes, the Republicans will make gains. And some big gains. But they couldn't help but do that since Obama handed them the election last year. The Tea Party probably dulled those gains somewhat. The TP movement is, in my opinion, a flash-in-the-pan and I doubt it will have any lasting impact.

The voters will continue to move in a mushy libertarian direction. The political system will continue to be "reformed" in order to prevent any real political challenge to the Democrats and Republicans. And that is the central issue in American politics today, one that no one is really talking about. The voters are moving in one direction while both parties are continuing to ignore the sentiments of the voters preferred instead to cater to their core members: left-wing loons and Right-wing bigots. Voter discontent is growing and the major parties have rigged the system so that they keep power in spite of that discontent.

Consider the "campaign reforms" that have been pushed in several places which prohibits any more than two candidates on the general election ballot for any one office. Those laws explicitly ban choice at the polls. Campaign finance reform was geared to protect incumbents from challenges, not to keep elections clean.

So, with rising voter discontent there is almost no way to fix the problem at the ballot box. The Demopublicans have made solutions illegal in order to continue their hold on power. In a third world country that would be a recipe for revolution. What it means in America is any one's guess.

Thank god for bigots.

In the last couple of days I have come to appreciate the bigots. Take the brain-dead fundamentalist from Arkansas who was vice president of the local school board and yet who posted a message about gay kids killing themselves by saying he would be happy if they all killed themselves.

That message was so raw and so ugly that it worked up a lot of people.

I come out of a fundamentalist background myself. I know precisely how ugly, cruel, intolerant and vicious those sweet, smiling Christians can be when given half a chance. I know first hand how small-minded they are and how prone they are to believe the most absurd and ridiculous thing about anyone that they despise.

The school I attended was associated with what was then the largest fundamentalist church in America. I don't mean denomination when I say church. I mean this one single church was literally the largest church in the world when it came to attendance. I am thrilled to say it is a shadow of its former self these days.

I graduated from their high school and moved on to the seminary. I look back on it and shake my head in wonder. How could I possibly have endured such morons for so long? But I did.

The schools were dominated by Right-wing extremists, often of some very ugly tendencies. The John Birch Society was considered fairly middle-of-the-road by these people even when the JBS started indulging in crazy Illuminati/CFR/Bilderberger nonsense. The far-Right author of None Dare Call It Treason, John Stormer, taught classes I attended, at least briefly. This sort of conspiratorial nonsense was taught as fact.

In addition the church itself had dozens of members who were active in the Klan. The school pushed Bircher theories. I got such theories directly from the leaders of the school and the principal was a key influence in forming the Moral Majority. I also heard him make some pretty racist comments in class about the inability of blacks to learn. He said reasoning was beyond them and that only memorization worked.

With top officials pushing the Birch Society I got involved in the organization. And while the JBS had a public profile of pretending to shun anti-Semites and other such bigots they didn't try very hard.

I was a young kid and these people were feeding me literature about how the Jews were the real conspirators and trying to take over the world. Yes, they actually believed in Jewish conspiracies. From within the Birch Society I was introduced to every extreme theory on the Far Right that you could possible find, at least at the time.

With the church and the school pushing similar ideas, I naively thought I had to accept them as true. So I did. All of it seemed to make a sort of consistent sense to me. Based on the false premises I got from the school, the JBS made sense. Based on what they taught about conspiracies the anti-Semites seemed to make sense. The racism seemed to make sense. And then they all would refer to the Bible for their proof.

I went to the summer youth camp that the Birch Society was organizing. I meet the top Birch officials and writers there. I ended up a youth leader in the American Party, an offshot of the bigoted campaign of George Wallace. I attended their conferences as well. Deeper and deeper it seemed to go. The loony consistency of all of it seemed to make sense.

And then one day something happened and I woke up. It was really pretty simple. I saw the real face of this movement and it terrified me. I saw what hate looked like when it was behind closed doors and allowed free reign.

Someone I knew from church invited me to a private meeting held inside a large garage at some one's house. I remember walking up this long driveway to the garage where there were around 50 chairs set up theater style. We sat down and the owner of the home welcomed us and then introduced the speaker. I honestly don't remember his name, it isn't important. It didn't matter who he was. What mattered was what he said and what he did.

From this door to the house come a group of men in full uniform, brown shirts, dark heavy black boots almost up to the knee, armbands emblazoned with swastikas, arms held out in the all-familiar "Heil Hitler" salute. The head of this clownish, in a Stephen King kind of way, band of Nazis stood at a podium. The uniformed would-be thugs he brought with placed themselves in a circle around the audience, as if they were watching us all very carefully.

This man then launched into a tirade about "niggers" and "kikes" and that come the revolution they all would be rounded up, tortured and killed. He gave a long, gruesome description of how those massive tree grinding machines could be used. The Jews, he said, could be tossed into them one person at a time and obliterated into a heap of bloody, fleshy pulp in a matter of seconds. He laughed about it. He found the entire depiction amusing and inspiring.

He did his best imitation of the Fuhrer, sputtering and spitting and hollering at the top of his voice his message of undying hatred. For years all this Right-wing bullshit had been fed to me, but it was all ideas and concepts. This hateful man made those ideas and concepts flesh and blood. He personified all that was wrong with what I had been taught. All the careful wording that used to placate the sensibilities of the media were forgotten that day. He said precisely what he meant and what he intended to do if ever given the chance.

I might have been just a teenager but this experience shook me up. It was so ugly, so inhuman. It started me wondering. I began questioning everything I had been taught, without exception.

I left that church, though not Christianity yet. I moved on to another, smaller church albeit one that was still fundamentalist. I was not yet ready to give that up. I started reading more widely and researching. I took all the conspiracy literature I was given and studied it, and all the books that were footnoted, and then read those books and their footnotes. I went through conspiratorial literature that went back two centuries. And the more I read the more clear it was to me how much nonsense it all was.

My new church disagreed with my old church on some key points. Yet each claimed to be following the infallible word of God. The more I studied the more I was unsure of any of this as well. And eventually I came to dismiss all theology and all deities as wishful thinking.

I was still in the seminary but having doubts. One day a kind and gentle Christian introduced himself and I was so thrilled that the semester was starting off with a new friend. Instead he merely wanted to know my name because he determined that my hair was about 1/3 of an inch too long. His feigned friendliness was a front in order to get my name so he could turn me in and get me in trouble with the school authorities.

At this time along came Anita Bryant with her very ugly anti-gay campaign. It reminded me of what I saw in that garage that day, the same kind of scapegoating. Instead of Jews in the cross hairs Anita was going after faggot and queers who "can't reproduce, so they recruit -- your children." Anita would speak but it was that jackbooted thug that I saw in my mind. Sure she smiled more and didn't want have them killed, just cured, or put back in the closet where they belong.

I wrote a letter to my local paper and signed my own name, opposing Anita and speaking out against her campaign. And from there the last ties I had with fundamentalism came crashing down. All these Right-wing types who saw me as their golden boy, as the teenager who understood their ideas, were furious. I listened to tirades from former friends calling radio shows to denounce me for criticizing Sister Anita. I packed my bags and left. I took a job writing and was soon spending a day with Anita and reporting on it. I went to a Moral Majority/Anita Bryant meeting called to demand that homosexuality be made a felony in the state. Jerry Falwell and Anita were the headliners. I reported on how I witnessed these "Christians" having their kids march around with signs calling for the murder of gay people. But hey, they didn't suggest tree grinding machines.

I may have forgotten the name of the jackbooted Nazi who spit out such hate and venom, but I will never forget the incident and tone and mental stench from the hatred. It started me on a journey, one that I continue every day. From that moment on, no belief I held was sacred, they still aren't. I continually reconsider and change views or modify them, and often reconfirm them as well. I also have moved more in a direction where I see the utter evil of hatred and of wielding power over others.

I don't know what would have happened had I never experience that jolting experience of seeing hate so perfectly illustrated in front of me. I like to think I would have evolved anyway, but I can't be sure. Yes, such things are ugly and horrible to consider but they do have their uses.

When Clint McCance went on Facebook and said he hoped all gay kids would kill themselves his venom was so disgusting that he lite a firestorm. Good for him. I'm glad he did it. In a sense he serves to others the function that Nazi wannabe served for me.

People want to think that the beliefs they hold about other groups or classes of people—gays, Jews, Mexicans, "illegal immigrants," or whoever is the target of the day—are reasonable and "moderate." Few extremists actually think they are extreme. Now and then someone takes their premises and follows them to the logical conclusion. And when that happens the moderates are shocked and horrified. They don't want to excuse it, but they aren't sure how to condemn it either. It causes them great discomfort because, for the first time, they see precisely where their beliefs are leading them.

That Nazi thug scared me because he was taking the beliefs I had been spoon fed by the church and school and moved them in a logical progression consistent with the premises held. He forced me to ask myself whether this was what I really wanted. And I didn't. I didn't want any of this. The images that day horrified me so much that I was terrified that if I said anything they might do some of these things to me. I only wanted to get out of there.

I did get out of there. And eventually I got out of the entire fundamentalist mindset. I became an atheist because I felt the entire god concept didn't make any sense. I abandoned the authoritarians of the Right and became a libertarian. The more I saw hatred the more I became concerned about oppression and people being harmed by the collectivist mob mentality of bigotry.

Clint McCance is a nobody whose ugly hate got him attention he wished hadn't have happened. Fred Phelps is a tyrannical minister filled with hate who abused everyone in his life, in one way or another. Yet his "God hates fags," and "God hates Jews" protest rally massive protests from every community he visits.

These bigots force people to see the logical results of bigoted premises. And that forces people to decided whether or not to cling to those premises, or to change them. We have seen huge shifts in public attention on issues relating to the state-sanctioned oppression of gay people. And one reason for this is because people like McCance and Phelps wake people up. They force them to see where the premises they hold are leading.

When it becomes clear that these premises are so ugly and so cruel, people begin abandoning them. I may not believe in a literal god but I can thank this mythical being for the existence of these bigots. These bigots are changing minds, just not in the direction they intend. Clint McCance got people in Arkansas thinking. He so shocked them that few would publicly defend him. After all, the man said he wished school kids would kill themselves, and he did so based on what he says the Bible teaches.

Today bigotry is weaker in Arkansas as a result. Just as the horrors of communism in practice discredited communism in theory, the horrors of bigotry in practice discredits the theories on which they are based. That also means that McCance made fundamentalism a little less appealing to some of its adherents. Like I did, some of them have now begun their journey away from hate because McCance made hate so real to them. And that is a good thing.

At least he had the sense to resign.

I am pleased to report that the Arkansas school board member who said he wished all gay kids would kill themselves, Clint McCance, has resigned from the school board.

He says he regrets the remarks. I'm sorry but I have to wonder if he is sorry he said it, or sorry that there was such a response to it. Those are not the same thing.

This man said he would disown his own children if one of them were gay. Wow! What sort of message does he think that sent to his own children?

He says: "The words I used were unfortunate but they can't be taken back." No, they can't. But they were not unfortunate. This was not just an "unfortunate" incident. He chose to say what he said, what is unfortunate, for him, is that he is paying the price. His political career is over.

I am glad he resigned and glad he apologized for the incredibly cruel things he said.

But I am haunted by the words of McCance that he would disown his own children. Such things happen in fundamentalist homes more than most people realize.

In his day the so-called "faith healer" Oral Roberts was well-known for holding the typical anti-gay view. His oldest son and heir apparent was Ronald Roberts. He was considered a highly intelligent man with the perfect family himself. But then Ronnie divorced and admitted he was gay. A few months later, facing nothing but rejection from his fundamentalist family and friends, Ronnie Roberts killed himself.

Ronnie's nephew, and Oral's grandson, Randy Roberts Potts, wrote about his mother's eyes would light up every time she spoke about Ronnie, her brother. Randy says that his want he wanted from his mother when she spoke about him but says that "her eyes don't ling up anymore, and haven't in years—for the last five, at least."

His mother wants little to do with Randy as well. Randy, like his uncle, had married and had a perfect family. And like his uncle he knew he was lying. He too was gay. Apparently the Roberts' family learned nothing from Ronnie's suicide. Randy is now alienated from his own family, living in Dallas and raising his children.

I hope Mr. McCance realizes how easily this can come to his own doorstep. He says he loves his two children, yet he said if one of them were gay he would "run them off."

Anti-gay bigotry is in a unique class of itself. A racist who hates blacks will not suddenly discover his own child is black. But the anti-gay bigot could wake up and find they have a gay child. It has happened time and time again. The adult disparaging gays could be insulting their own children in an incredibly cruel way without ever knowing it.

Photo: Clint McCance

Jihad in Arkansas

Jihad is an attitude, one that says that others actually deserve to die because they violate your own religious fantasies. I have argued that the fundmentalist Christians are basically compelled to cruelty and hatred based on their view of the Bible.

Let us move to that cultural cesspool known as Arkansas where self-proclaimed "Christian" Clint McCance sits on the Midland, Arkansas school board.

First, allow me to remind you of the events that lie behind this astoundingly reprehensible actions by Mr. McCance.

As this blog, and thousands of others, has reported there was a tragic series of young teens killing themselves because they were being harassed and bullied for being gay. The faces in this blog are some of those kids. Please keep them in mind as you read about what Mr. McCance did. Keep in mind that McCance is one of the elected officials in Midland, AR, whose job is to run the school system that incarcerates thousands of students on a daily basis. His job is to "educate" these children.


After the series of suicides there was a national outcry against the bullying and some groups promoted an awareness campaign where students would wear purple on one day to bring attention to these tragedies. Mr. McCance responded to the campaign by saying that he wanted gay kids to kill themselves. I am not making this up. He posted the following on his Facebook page and keep in mind that the "queers" he mentions are young kids. The spelling is his own, indicating one doesn't have to be intelligent to run a school, at least not government schools.

"Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers killed themselves. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed thereselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE."

This self-identified Christian then responded to someone who protested his wording and his monstrous sentiments.

"No because being a fag doesn't give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then dont tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. I dont care how people decide to live their lives. They dont bother me if they keep it to thereselves. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die. If you arent against it, you might as well be for it."

"I would disown my kids they were gay. They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off. Of course my kids will know better. My kids will have solid christian beliefs. See it infects everyone."

So how has the Midland School Board responded so far. First they removed the names of their board members. Then they disabled their email system to prevent outsiders from using their site to send them emails. McCance has not retracted his comments nor apologized for them.

What kind of moral compass is operating when a school official wish gay students would kill themselves? McCance says his three passions are "god, family and fishing." I can't speak for any god, nor will I pretend to, I will that to theologians, they are so good at faking that they speak for the divine. I can, however, say something about family. And this invoking "family" to justify hating other people's children is as anti-family as one can get. Like it or not gay kids are not found in cabbage patches. They grow up in families. They have brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. And all of them grieve and mourn when their gay loved one dies. "Family" is not a code word for hate, no matter how much fundamentalists pretend it is. Families are cemented together by love and any family that can't say that is not really a family, just a collection of people accidentally related by blood.

In this blogpost I wrote about "telling kids they are worthy of death." I noted how religious messages, especially coming from the fundamentalist sects, are quite openly sending out messages that gay people should die. And they are sending that message to their own children. Even if they never have gay children themselves, which is not something they manage to avoid all the time, they are still sending that message to other children. We should also remember that they are sending this message to kids who then bully and harass other kids precisely because they are gay. These messages give succor to the bullies and help justify their actions. These "godly" messages tell the bullies and bigots that jihad against gay people is divinely sanctioned.

Angle pulls out the racist card

This is the very ugly, very racist tirade of Sharron Angle the so-called Tea Party candidate in Nevada. Any libertarian who is still defending this disgusting movement has either not been paying attention or is brain dead. The Tea Party is anti-liberty. They are bigoted against immigrants and gays and are actually worse on social liberty than your normal Republican. Surveys show that the Tea Party is mainly the most reactionary element of the Republican Party.

Angle, who is also a staunch anti-gay bigot, of course, claims that "waves" of Mexicans are coming to America. Actually immigration flows are way down because these people came looking for jobs and when jobs dry up they go back. But in Angle's fevered, bigoted, little brain these people are not coming to America for work but for the explicit purpose of "joining violent gangs, forcing families to live in fear."

Is this true? Are millions of Mexicans flocking to America to join gangs? For answer I turned to the National Gang Threat Assessment published by the FBI and various police agencies who deal with gangs.


The first problem with Angle's slander against Mexicans is that millions of them can't be joining gangs. The NGTA report indicates that the total number of gang members in the US, of all races and nationalities tops out at 1 million. And of these over 100,000 are in prison. So Angle's estimate of illegal immigrants in gangs exceeds the total number of all gang members in the country

So Angle's main claim is impossible. Another problem is indicated when we look at which regions of the country report gang activity. In the Southwest, where most illegals come into the country, 63% of law enforcement report gang activity. This is lower than the Southeast region, or the Bible-belt where 68% report gang activity. The national average is 58% so the region with the most Mexicans is barely above the average. For instance the region include Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming came in at 58%, yet this is not a region known for having large numbers of illegal immigrants.

We should also look at what fueled the rise in gang numbers in the US, and it wasn't immigration, legal or otherwise. It is the war on drugs that creates massive profit opportunities for gangs to deal in drugs. The report notes:

During the 1980s, gangs that engaged in drug
trafficking in major cities began to expand their
drug distribution networks into suburban communities
influenced by local gangs. The larger
gangs controlled drug distribution in city drug
markets; they were motivated to move into adjoining
communities to generate additional income
by capitalizing on burgeoning powder cocaine and
crack cocaine abuse. Large urban gangs generated
millions of dollars from trafficking illicit drugs in
urban and suburban areas; this income enabled the
gangs to recruit new members and to force smaller
local gangs to either disband or align with them,
thereby increasing their dominance. To enhance
profits from drug trafficking and other crimes, large
urban gangs also deployed members to locate new
drug markets throughout the country, including in
suburban and rural communities. As various gangs
attempted to expand nationally, they often were
met with initial resistance by local gangs. This resistance
resulted in an increased number of homicides
and drive-by shootings in suburban communities.

Gangs expanded in the US during the last few decades for the same reason that the Mob expanded during Prohibition. Government stupidity pushes up the profits in offering an illegal substance that are desired, rightly or wrongly, by a large percentage of Americans. The profits are artificially high because the drugs are illegal. Given the violent nature of the drug warriors themselves it makes sense that over time more and more of the distribution of drugs will be handled by individuals who are just as violent, if not more so, than the police agents who enforce this law.

Gang members who do migrate illegally to the US do so to take advantage of the drug trade or because they work with the drug cartels who have been created by the prohibition of drugs. But there is no evidence that a significant number of undocumented workers in the country are here for gang activities. Drug prohibition is the main source of gang income. According to NGTA: "Gangs earn the profits essential to maintaining their criminal operations and the lifestyles of their members primarily through drug distribution." However, the crack down on the border has pushed many gangs into the people smuggling business. As usual prohibition fuels criminal enterprises.

Since millions of illegal immigrants are NOT fueling gangs how many are involved? Here is an estimate based on the NTGA estimates of the major gangs with Hispanic members, not all of whom would be illegal:

18th Street Gang: 24,o00 to 40,000 members who are assumed illegals.
Almight Latin King: Has 20,000 to 35,000 members but is open to "individuals of any nationality." No mention of significant illegal immigrant membership.
Florencia 13: about 3,000 not all of whom are illegal.
Fresno Bulldogs: 5,000 to 6,000 not all of whom are illegal.
Sureños and Norteños: No membership figures but these are gang members from other gangs that are numbered. These are members of other gangs imprisoned and working in the prisons. So these figures are included in other figures.
Tango Blast: Formed by Hispanic men in prison as protection against other gangs such as the Aryan Brotherhood.
Barrio Azteca: around 2,000 many illegals not all.
Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos: around 1,000.
Mexikanemi: around 2,000 members.
Mexican Mafia: about 200 members.
Neta: Hispanic but mainly Puerto Rican not Mexican.

That is a list of the major gangs that are listed in the report which have Hispanic memberships of any significance mentioned. Their totals are around 90,000 or so and not all of them are illegal.
Many were actually born in the United States.

The gangs in America certainly are growing and as long as the drug warriors have their way these gangs will get bigger and bigger and more and more violent. Violent drug warriors encourage increasing violent drug dealers. The war on drugs won't stifle the demand for drugs and as long as demand remains high the drug war will offer massive profits to anyone willing to take on the cops. And who is willing to take on the cops: violent gangs.

Add into this mix the new profits being offered because of the border crackdown and the federal government is literally handing millions in artificially high profits to the gangs. Now, will Angle do anything to help encourage "legal" immigration or to end the war on drugs? No, just the opposite. It is Angle and people like her who are creating the very conditions that fuel the gangs.

One case that says a lot.

I still run across moronic conservatives and even some very stupid libertarians who argue that gay couples can get all the same rights as straight couples merely through private legal contract. Of course that is just so much bullshit. A private legal contract would not save this couple from forced separation. And while marriage laws are state issues, under the so-called state's rights doctrine, immigration law is not. So, yes Virginia, there is a need for federal recognition of gay relationships. Marriage would stop the deportation process if they were straight. It might not mean the spouse can stay since the Feds routinely separate legally married people in their zeal to keep the xenophobes happy, but it would stop the process until the individual case were adjudicated.

In addition this case smashes the claims made by the bigots at the National Organization for (sic) Marriage. NOM claims that gay marriages would be a push for special rights not equal rights. Equal rights would give both kinds of couples legal rights in regards to immigration. Special rights would give one set rights that are not enjoyed by the other set. The only people pushing for special rights is NOM, which uses the Mormon supplied funding it receives to deny gay couples even the right to be together, let alone marry.

Legislation requires you to lie.

There is a case of interest brewing in Michigan. A woman named Tracie Rowe put up an ad at her church saying: "I'm looking for a Christian roommate."

For that she is facing charges in court for violating the federal fair housing laws. The bureaucrats pushing the case say it is a clear case of "an illegal preference."

Let me state immediately that while I'm an atheist and opponent of bigotry, I support this woman's right to make this decision.

Rowe was specifically looking for someone to share her living quarters, much the way that someone looks for someone to share a life with, which includes living quarters. Having a roommate encompasses many of the same issues that being married entails. There is an intimacy to sharing living space that does not exist in other human relationships.

Right-wing Christian groups are defending Rowe. The Alliance Defense Fund said, "This is outrageous to think that the government can come into your private house and try and tell you who you can and cannot have as a roommate. It's just absurd."

I have no love for the Alliance Defense Fund, they are a nasty bunch of bigoted fundamentalists. But here they are right, even if they are stunningly hypocritical. Why do I say that?

ADF is one of the religious Right groups wanting to deny gay couples the right to marry. Let us take the ADF's comments about the Rowe case and rewrite it very slightly: "This is outrageous to think that the government can come into your private house and try and tell you who you can and cannot have as a spouse. It's just absurd."

So, it is absurd for government to regulate roommates, but not absurd for government to control who is your legal spouse?

The lawyers from ADF say that this is a matter of freedom of association. True, it is. But so is marriage. In fact, under the law, as it has evolved, the government grants far more freedom in marriage than it does in others are of life. You can't racially discriminate in hiring, but you can in marrying. You can't refuse to perform business services for a Jew but a Catholic priest can refuse to perform a marriage for the same Jew. If anything, the legal case against state control of spouses is greater than the case against state control of roommate advertisements. Who one marries is ultimately more important to them than whether one's roommate has the same religion.

Need I remind the readers from the Left, with whom I share many values, that before they laugh at the utter hypocrisy of the Right in this case, that they should also consider their own contradictions. The law under which this woman is being prosecuted is one the Left supports. They said that the freedom of association of this woman must be infringed in the name of "fair housing."

What is particularly bizarre is that the woman can still only take on a Christian roommate, she just can't advertise for one. As was reported: "Haynes (one of the bureaucrats) says Rowe can live with whomever she wants, but law '804-C' is about what you publish. The law says you can't print publish, or advertise based on race. limitation, sex, or religion." So, an atheist such as myself can't say, "No religious need apply." But I can still only share a house with atheists if I prefer, I just can't tell the truth in my ad.

Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, so the Constitution says. Yet many of my friends on the Left who are quite willing to apply free speech protections to pornography (as I would) are not willing to apply this same principle to stating housing preferences. Remember that the crime here is stating the preference not indulging it.

And who are these bureacrats helping? Is it the people who would be discriminated against? No, not at all. Remember Rowe was still allowed to pick only a Christian roommate, she was only forbidden in expressing that preference. So individuals, looking to share a house with someone, could take time off of work to meet with Rowe, they could go out of their way to get to her home, spend their precious time and resources to meet with her, without ever having a chance to actually be a roommate. They aren't allowed to get advance warning that they are throwing away their time and money to meet with Rowe.

This does NOT mean they will be roommates as Rowe is still free to reject them. But Rowe is not allowed to let these people, doomed to failure in the roommate search, know that they would be wasting their time. The law itself inflicts additional damages on the unsuccessful roommates by requiring them to spend resources foolishly because the knowledge they needed to spend it wisely is censored under federal law. So the "victims" of the discrimination are not made better off by the law. All the law does is increase the costs for everyone. But it gives parasitical bureaucrats an excuse for squandering more tax funds.

Looking at roommates and spouses as a matter of freedom of association means I oppose both the Left and the Right. I oppose the Left when it comes to "anti-discrimination" laws, such as the one at stake in the Rowe case, but I equally, and for the same reasons, oppose the Right-wing attempts to have government control whether or not one may marry a person of the same gender. I agree with the Left when it comes to their general support (Obama is a big exception) for marriage rights for gay couples, but I equally, and for the same reasons, support the right of private individuals to decide who to room with.

By the way, the case for gay marriage is even stronger that that of roommate preferences. Government discrimination is far more onerous and troublesome than private discrimination. With private businesses that discriminate it is easier to move from one company to another; there are literally millions of employers seeking employees. But with government monopolistic power structures that is very difficult to do. If the US government discriminates, as it does with marriage rights, then you are screwed unless you can get another government monoply power structure to see things differently and allow you to live there, which is very difficult

It is far easier to avoid private discrimination than it is to avoid legislative discrimination. A non-Christian wanting to rent a room would have a much easier time locating a roommate who isn't so picky than a gay person would have in finding a government that will legally recognize his marriage. Government has more control over larger areas of life than any one private business can ever have, that is why private discrimination is not nearly as worrisome as state-mandated bigotry.

Giant penis attacks Texas

Collective rights, petty debates and real pain.

Because many libertarians came to their philosophy from the Right they often bring with them a style of discussion that betrays their roots. While philosophically their position may be correct the way in which they express themselves conveys meanings they do not intend and alienate the people whom they are hoping to address.

Libertarians believe in individual rights. I have no problem with that. Rights do reside entirely in the individual. There is no such thing as collective rights, just the rights of the individual. So it would seem logical for a libertarian to shun terms like “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” or “minority rights,” etc.

We should be clear that people use the term “rights” in two different ways, and without clarifying which one is using can lead to unnecessary confusion. When a libertarian says that someone has “rights” they are referring to the ideal situation, not to the actual situation. It is to the libertarian vision of individual rights that they are referring.

This causes an immediate problem as others may be using the term to describe the actual legal state of rights, not the ideal state of rights. Yes, gay people have precisely the same rights as straight people in the ideal sense of the term. In the actual sense of the term they do not.

Two men, each identical in every important sense of the word, who attempt to join the military may be treated entirely differently if one of those men is gay and the other is not. There is an inequality of legal rights, even if in the ideal sense of the word the two men should have precisely the same rights. Similarly two couples will be treated very differently when it comes to marriage rights if one couple is gay and the other is straight. Legally the rights of gay people in America today are not co-equal to the legal rights enjoyed by their heterosexual siblings.

Often when the term “gay rights” is used it is a term meant to address the inequality of rights that exist, not the ideal sense of rights. It is an attempt to move the actual rights enjoyed by gay people to an equal plain with the rights enjoyed by straight people. The term “gay rights” is often used by someone who has no intention of creating a system of unequal rights. It is not a “special” right that is being sought but precisely the same rights that have been denied gay people by law. Similarly the term “women’s rights” is not generally meant to be a situation where women have different, or superior rights, but precisely the same rights as men. This does not mean that some people use the terms to disguise a campaign for unequal rights, but most people who use these terms do not mean that at all. More often than not their opponents are actually the advocates of unequal rights before the law, individuals who wish to reserve special privileges to a class, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Consider the likes of Maggie Gallagher and Jennifer Roback Morse. They fight for a system of marriage rights that excludes one class of people—gay couples. They want legal privileges reserved to another specific class of people alone. Yet opponents of equality of rights argue that it is the gay couples that are seeking “special” rights, when in truth they are attempting to eradicate special rights in favor of equality of rights.

There is also another aspect of “rights” which libertarians simply tend to forget, or never realized. While it is true that a person does not have rights because he is a member of a specific group it is true that individuals frequently have their rights violated precisely because he is a member of a specific group.

A woman who is gay may ideally have precisely the same rights as any other adult, but she may be denied some of those rights because she is gay. Taxation may violate rights on a relatively equal basis. A general sales tax hurts everyone regardless of what group he may be a member of while Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell disqualifies individuals on the basis of a collective trait, not an individual one.

Racists attack blacks, or Jews, or foreigners, not on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of some collective trait. Ayn Rand described racism as the “lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.” Rand is correct this is what racism does.

Modern prejudices or bigotries basically argue that an individual is not judged by his individual characteristics but simply because he is a member of some larger collective. Instead of judging on the basis of the content of their character the stigmatized individual is judged on the basis of his membership in some collective. Thus a woman may be deemed of lesser value because she is a woman, a black man may be treated like a criminal because he is black, and a gay man may be attacked physically or verbally simply because he is gay.

The bigot ignores all the aspects of the individual and instead focus on some shared collective trait. “All Muslims are... All homosexuals do... The problem with Jews is...” They don’t need to evaluate the individual because they assume the collective trait dominates. Thus all homosexual men are disqualified from the military, not because of any trait of the individual, but because of their group status. A Jew may be attacked, not because he or she has done anything wring, but just because they are Jew.

When individuals are attacked because of their group membership they will quite naturally and reasonable focus on how members of their group are being singled out for attacks. While the terms “gay rights” or “minority rights” or “woman’s rights” are not philosophical precise they are a reasonable response to the attacks these people suffer because they are members of groups. They are not singled out for attack on the basis of their individuality, but on the basis of a shared collective trait, usually one of no significance.

But, consider how libertarians respond to this understandable reaction by members of oppressed classes. The libertarian will often tend to ignore the fact that such people are being attacked for their membership in some larger collective. Instead of recognizing what is being conveyed they will attack the use of the collective rights terminology. So they will launch a high-sounding dismissal of the concept of “gay rights” while ignoring the way gay people are denied their rights due to the shared trait of their sexual orientation.

They are technically correct but they have defeated their own purpose. They are ignoring the real troubling issue at stake to concentrate on a less significant detail. By launching into a discourse on how rights are not collective traits they are not informing their listener about the nature of individual rights. They may mean to do that but they are not doing that. They are actually sending the message that they don’t care that the rights of certain people are being denied because of some collective trait. And that makes them sound like conservatives who are often the most vocal collectivists when it comes to denying equality of rights before the law.

The libertarian sentiment should naturally side with those who suffer oppression in a state or culture because of collective traits. Libertarians, who tend to be individualists, ought to be on the side of individuals who are being singled out because of collective, insignificant traits.

Libertarians ought to weigh the two sins being committed. On the one hand the victim uses a term that is imprecise and seems to convey that rights reside in collectives. On the other hand what they are addressing is how they are being harmed by a hate that singles them out collectively not individually. Of these two the violation of individual rights is surely far more severe than a loose use of a term.

The first reaction of the libertarian should be to acknowledge that an individual is having their rights violated due to a collectivist concept regarding who they are. First address the issues of the oppression and collectivist hate. Before you begin lecturing someone about loose terms address the real, significant violation of rights that these victims are attempting to convey. Don’t major on minors.

When I hear the terms “woman’s rights” or “gay rights” I see what people are attempting to convey, not a philosophical debate. Turning it into a philosophical debate ignores the pain and oppression that these people have experienced at the hands of bigots. That is what I would expect from conservatives, not from libertarians. Focus first on the main issues, defend the rights of the individual which are being violated, make an ally and a friend, and they worry about terminology. Put the intent of the phrase ahead of the literal interpretation and give the philosophy lecture after you are established your credibility.