Scervellato (Scatterbrained)

Youu don't have to share my politics to be my friend.

2009-12-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

The man I'm engaged to marry is a tightwad Republican fiscal consrvatiive (and a social liberal-- though I have more qualms about abortion than he does. Since neither of us has ovaries nor wants children besides our pets, that's a non-issue in our relationship.

President Thin-Skin wants to be all things to all people: Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)

2009-12-08T13:51:00.000-08:00

Stop demeaning me! Is that Meghan McCain shouting at some uptight twittering twits about her infamous twitties pic on her Daily Beast blog? No! It's the President of the United States whining about substantive disagreements on policy that he has with John Conyers. such as all the compromises he makes to Republicans for no/none/zip/zero votes. Wants to keep that "moderate" image no one thinks he has. The right wing sees him as a socialist, moderates see him as a liberal, liberals see him as milquetoast, and left wingers think he's a traitor.

Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader on how to win in 2010

2009-12-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

Steny Hoyer Speech I read this with a certain amount of glee. I think it's brilliant. Showing the Republicans for the obstructionists they are is the only way to win and increase the House Democratic Majority.

Favorite Fiction Reads This Year

2009-12-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to mention a few books I've read and liked this year. I am mostly obsessed with getting through the American Presidents Series, nut here is what else I've liked:

Five Good Reads from Jay:

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd
Review of THE CASEBOOK OF VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN by The Independent (London)

The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
NYT Review of The Indian Clerk

Do Not Deny Me: Stories by Mary Gaitskill
The Feminist Review: DO NOT DENY ME

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Chicago Sun-Times review of LACUNA

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
Kansas City Star Reviews TOO MUCH HAPPINESS

Morning of December 8th: Random Musings

2009-12-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

I really regret not mentioning Pearl Harbor Day, yesterday. I'm sure a lot of the Patriotic Blogs are out there doing a better job than I would on this anyway. In thinking about the 40s, such a tragedy-filled life for my family in Central Europe, I still don't think there is a greater President than Franklin Delano Roosevelt (except Abraham Lincoln). My mother disagrees: she thinks it was Truman, who recognized Israel, and she notes that Rooosevelt sent a ship filled with 10,000 Jewish refugees back to Hamburg during the eight of The Final Solution. So maybe there's a special place in Purgatory for Roosevelt. Of course, not being a Catholic, I don't believe in Purgatory, but every President has left a conflicted history, whether it has been with Afro-Americans, Amerindians, the poor, Jews, the Irish, gays, Iraqis or whatever. As I mentioned in a previous post, I think all people in power, particularly those who are called to serve God, in whatever form that may be, have an obligation to speak up and in Spike Lee's words, Do The Right Thing.

December 7th is a day that will live in infamy, in the words of FDR. Of course, so was September 11th, 2001. I remember George Bush's promise that "we are gonna find the people who took down these buildings." Obama is still fighting Bush's war, and now we have a surge there. God bless those people. GW Bush = BH Obama. No difference. None at all.

I'm rockin' out right now to the 80s tune "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," by the one-hit wonder, The Georgia Satellites. Brings back memories, some that would be inappropriate to share on a general/non-adult content blog. It involves a Maserati, romance and some questionable substances that may or may not have been ingested at the time. I can say with absolute certainty that I did not inhale ANYTHING. It is a memory of a good time in youth., before I had the Capuchin monk spot on my head and when My height and weight were in correct proportion. The Georgia Coast at Brunswick, 1983. It is a good memory. And remember, it all depends on what the meaning of is "is."

And I'm still wondering why the US Press is not pursuing the Uganda story with vigor and energy. But then I've read Nicholas Kristof (an Oregonian) in the New York Times scream loudly about Darfur as we and the European Union looked (and continue to look) the other way. Genocide is happening there, worse than the murder of the Bosnians of Srebrenica in the 1990s. Oh but remember, one of the reasons we went into Iraq was that Saddam had "gassed" his own people.

Why does Obama stand so still, give the empty soaring rhetoric to us, and then do noting. He is as impotent, inexperienced and disastrous as Jimmy Carter. The people around Reagan were the parents of the people who advised GWB. But Reagan, for all his jingoistic talk, was never that way in person with world leaders he negotiated with. He formed a relationship with Gorbachev, and building on all the measured bellicosity America had shown the Soviet Union, he brougt the Berlin Wall down. To see an argument against my beliefs on this topic please see Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future by Will Bunch. It is very informative, and if you are a liberal, you will love it, if you are a conservative, you will boil over. If yoo're a centrist like me, you will recognize that the author makes some good points.

I also think that a book that will go down in history as great prose and well-reasoned exposé is Al Gore's The Assault Upon Reason (2007).

Have a good day.

Meghan McCain's take on "Brothers"

2009-12-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

I want very much to see this film. Let's face it Meghan, you're my idol, but, I mean what do you want, "Patton"? I thought with the first of the Vietnam movies from the 1980s we could get more complex than merely celebrating the heroic. Sure, I'll watch the documentary you mention, but don't slam movies just because they portray soldiers or cops in a bad light. There are bad soldiers and good, bad cops and good, bad teachers and good... we don't want Hollywood to become a propaganda machine for anything but large breasts and big guns.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-07/why-does-hollywood-hate-our-troops/

We have 2nd gay Episcopal Bishop; Uganda has anti-gay laws.``

2009-12-07T14:49:00.000-08:00

Well, most Christian leaders in this country except Pastor Rick Warren, have said they oppose what Uganda is about to do between gays and lesbians. Rick Warren says it isn't his place to "take sides." Is that what we should be telling ourselves if we have a Purpose-Driven Life?
Uganda's anti gay laws rile US

Abortion, Gay Marriage and the Catholic Church in the Health Care Debate

2009-12-06T19:44:00.000-08:00

FOR those of you who have been following the health care debate, it is obvious that the Stupak Amendment, put forward by Representative Bart Stupak is a center of contention that is complicating and which might in fact derail health care reform. Today's Wall Street Journal also quoted Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson as saying that he would attempt to insert a similar provision into the Senate bill before conference with the House.

Whether you believe that abortion is a "right to privacy" case à la Griswold v. Connecticut or not, you are, I hope aware that the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. through the resounding voice of Archbishop Donald Wuerl, is threatening to withhold all social services dollars from the District if Congress passes health care legislation without the Stupak Amendment. (They have made similar threats to District of Columbia officials and U.S. lawmakers about the now-passed Marriage Equality Act of Washington, DC.) This is the problem with so-called "Faith-Based" initiatives championed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which give taxpayer dollars to religious institutions who in turn are to provide social services.

The Archdiocese provides approximately 68,000 people with social services in the capital region. I wonder how an organization that calls itself Christian and that provides 68,000 needy people a wide variety of social services could hold such a threat over the head of Congress. Are these needy people members of Congress? Are they makers of policy? Do they have any power over legislation, or in some cases, over their own lives?

Whether you agree with abortion or not (and on a strictly personal level, I do not), the wall of separation between church and state, as articulated by Thomas Jefferson in his writings about the Constitution, is breached by such threats. In fact, when religious charities use public funds at all, they should be required to follow the law as it exists. I am not saying that the Catholic Church should be forced to allow gay weddings to be performed by their clergy on their property. I am saying that they should not impose their religious beliefs on the rest of the city of Washington, DC, or the nation. I am not even saying that their hospitals and medical personnel should be forced to provide abortions. I am saying that if and when they take money, they should follow Constitutional dictates.

The government, in fact, should not provide public funds to religious charities at all. As religious institutions, they have the right to freedom of religion. But others should have the right to freedom from religion,or in this case from the unelected representatives of the Roman Catholic faith. This is where the conflict between church and state festers.

As the nonpartisan factcheck.org points out, the Stupak amendment really doesn't further restrict a woman's right to chose to terminate a pregnancy. This is not the point. By allowing public dollars to go into ecclesiastical hands, we encounter a whole host of ways in which the Bible or the Koran or the Book of Mormon or some other religious document comes into conflict with the Constitution, which happens to be the governing document of the United States of America. It is a decidedly secular document in spite of its Deistic 18th century invocations to God.(Note to the Archdiocese of Washington and other conservative Christian institutions, the word "Jesus" is never found in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address... need I go on?).

The Archbishop of Washington was not chosen by the American people, American Catholics, or even the Catholics of Washington, DC. He should not be allowed to make threats to any elected member of the federal, state or local governments, and he certainly ought not to be given the leverage to do so. Elected government officials do not, as President Kennedy declared, take their orders from Rome. President Obama should rebuke him publicly and take the heat from the right-wing press and blogs. The Bishop of Providence may tell Congressman Patrick Kennedy not to take communion, but he may not and ought not tell him how to vote.

I wish women never wanted to terminate their pregnancies. But I have to acknowledge that forcing them to do something with their bodies against their will is in conflict with the law of the land (and with my own notion of autonomy, which is irrelevant.) There are a thousand reasons to celebrate the right to privacy. One of them is that we should all rue the day when we go backwards, to when "all men" didn't include black men or any women, or to when gays had to worry about whether they were committing a sin or a crime or had a mental illness. (Wait a minute! We're still in those days when it comes to gays and lesbians).

The Stupak amendment should be taken off the able as an unconstitutional side show, and when a health issue such as abortion comes up, the choice should be determined by a woman in consultation with her doctor and her conscience, and not by a legislator pursuing partisan interests at odds with the law of the land. Much as I dislike abortion personally, I have to agree with President Clinton: abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

This is not even a question of whether abortion or marriage equality is good for the fabric of the nation. The Constitution as it is written provides for a right to privacy (without explicitly using those words.) Quoting Oyez.org, the most prominent and comprehensive blog on the Supreme Court:

"The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court's ruling." This ruling has been affirmed many times by the Supreme Court. Even then-Judge John Roberts, during his confirmation hearings to become Chief Justice of the United States, called Roe v. Wade "settled law."

The logic of Roe was faulty (for reasons I am not going to enumerate here): Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, no foe of abortion acknowledged that. And, as medical advances occur, "viability" as used in Justice Harry Blackmun's reasoning, often comes sooner than the third trimester of a pregnancy. Still the right to privacy has steadily evolved since Griswold, Roe has been upheld time after time, and Lawrence v. Texas prohibited prosecution of same-sex partners engaging in consensual sexual activity, the Supreme Court's decisions have ruled decisively that religion and "2,000 years of Western Civilization" in Justice Scalia's words do not trump the Constitution.

Scalia and other so-called "strict constructionists," cannot truly believe that we are still living in 1789. If they do, we must make every effort to thwart them before they abort the spirit of the Constitution and its promise to be a guiding light for the future. Obama should overcome his cowardliness and declare that, so that the rule of law, not the rule of man, wins the day.

Uganda: A Test for the Obama administration

2009-12-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

As I have said many times, the Obama administration has failed gays and lesbians. Those of us whose who are sexual minorities have a lot of bones to pick with Obama, He could have asked the Justice Department to immediately stop prosecuting cases of "Don't Ask Don't Tell", as he has done with medical marijuana cafes. He has not acted to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. He has done only very cosmetic things. Now he needs to speak up for human rights in Africa.

Currently, Uganda is about to pass a heinous law. It imprisons people for life who are known to be gay. It requires that people with HIV who have sex, even protected sex, be put to death. It requires those who know of anyone who is gay to report it within 24 hours or be jailed for a year. It requires that anyone who speaks up for the rights of gays and lesbians to be imprisoned for 7 years. It is, in the words of one African Episcopal bishop, genocide. Please try to get a hold of Rachel Maddow's MSNBC broadcast of December 4th, I will provide a few links from British newspapers and episcopalcafe.com

Why isn't Obama leading?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1232081/Gordon-Brown-caught-gay-rights-storm-Uganda-debates-death-penalty-homosexuals.html