Saturday, May 02, 2015

Baltimore the Turning Point? It Is Possible

I was as surprised as anybody to hear that Baltimore has charged all six cops with crimes in the killing of innocent young Freddie Gray, after a fast investigation. These are serious charges, and it raises the interesting possibility that our neighbor city of Baltimore will be the place where the tide starts to turn.

These are not simple issues. We are born into the evolution of a society, a history, we live it and shape it as it flows along, and it lives and shapes us. White people can say, I never owned slaves, and black people living today have never experienced slavery, but we hold attitudes that were formed under slavery, on one side or the other, and many of those attitudes have mutated nearly imperceptibly over time. We are not born to a clean slate where we simply decide how to be, we learn what our people have learned, white and black. And the end of slavery was not the end of prejudice and injustice, it was just an evolutionary increment, like when dinosaurs grew feathers, millions of years before birds could fly.

America's racial problems are not going to go away tomorrow. There is still a lot -- a lot -- of anger directed toward black people for not succeeding in a world defined by European culture. It is sometimes shocking to hear the politicians and the Fox personalities talking about black people as if they simply suffer some kind of character weakness and that's why so many of them are poor, why the schools in their neighborhoods are so bad, why the jails are full of black people. There is no acknowledgement of the advantages that are handed to white folks -- I believe that these kinds of things in our own lives are often impossible to see, like a fish that is unaware of water. These white loudmouths think black people should just change, just go ahead and change, in ways that they would never in a million years be able to do if they found themselves trapped in a similar situation. Be like me, they say, but they are just like their daddies, and their granddaddies before them.

There are many narratives telling how we got to this point, but it doesn't matter, this is not the time to unravel the story, it is time to step carefully back from the brink. The police violence is too much. It is an embarrassment to a country that calls itself "free." We are a complex society that requires some imposed order, we have laws that don't enforce themselves, police are a necessary component of a civil society. But look, you might have missed this; more than a month ago, the Baltimore Sun reported:
As state lawmakers consider several bills related to the use of force by police, the American Civil Liberties Union reported Wednesday that 109 people died after encounters with police in Maryland between 2010 and 2014.

Nearly 70 percent of those who died during the encounters were black, and more than 40 percent of the people were unarmed, the ACLU of Maryland reported. The advocacy group found that blacks, who make up less than a third of the state population, were five times more likely to die from interactions with police than whites.
That's 109 people in our little state -- the number is obviously higher now -- do you know the names of any of them? Do you remember seeing any one of them mentioned in the newspaper? Did they come through your Twitter feed, your Facebook page? No, it just happens. Mothers lose their sons and they cry and that's all, that's the end of it. Pretty soon it happens to another mother on the block and she cries, and then another. A few, then a dozen, then dozens, then hundreds of crying mothers, their pain unknown outside their own neighborhoods.

We shrug off this police violence when we hear about it, thinking it must be "necessary" somehow, but now that people have cameras on their phones and we can see for ourselves what has happened, we know that is not the case. It doesn't appear to be anything more than a ruling class keeping the poor in their place. Maybe that is a universal human theme, maybe conquerors have tormented the vanquished since the dawn of time, I don't care, I believe in an America that is evolving beyond that, where people are free. This is an old argument, it goes back to the Founding Fathers, it came to a fracture during the Civil War, it is still the faultline that separates Red and Blue America. It's not exactly race, all the time, it's "us" and "them." In all cases it is a matter of "us" being big-hearted enough to acknowledge that "they" may be different from us, but they deserve our respect as human beings. Whoever "they" are.

One of the policemen was charged with "depraved heart murder." I had never heard of that before. It is a good term. A perfect term.

The evolution of America is lurching forward in increments. Right now we are a dumb-looking feathered dinosaur without even the sense to try flapping our wings. But when Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby stood at the podium reading off the narrative and listing the charges, it felt like perhaps our next fall could land a little lighter. It is possible that Baltimore will have a fair and thorough trial of these depraved-heart policemen. It is possible that someone will finally be found guilty, and that the citizens of Baltimore who have been victimized by them all these years will regain some ownership of their community.

The mayor of Baltimore has said, "I will continue to be relentless in changing the culture of the police department." It is possible that a profound change in American culture has started, and will radiate out from the city of Baltimore.

We grew up believing "the policeman is your friend." Americans respect the police, it's in our blood. And for that reason we give them a break. If somebody gets hurt in a tussle between a good guy and a bad guy, we give the good guy the benefit of the doubt. I'm okay with that, even knowing that there have always been bad cops and there always will be. But when having a busted taillight while black becomes a capital offense, or catching a cop's eye for a second too long, no, this isn't Marshall Dillon we're talking about here, this isn't even Clint Eastwood, this is just plain old cowardice.

Baltimore could possibly be the turning point.

288 Comments:

Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Yet another anti-gay GOP politician is exposed as a closeted member of the LGBT community

We see examples of this on an incredibly regular basis - the most anti-gay people are same sex attracted themselves. This is obviously also the case with Wyatt/bad anonymous - no completely heterosexual man is as obsessed with gays as he is.

Men like Wyatt/bad anonymous can't accept their own same sex attractions so they attack LGBTs in general in a displacement attempt subconciously desiring to destroy their own same sex attractions by trying to destroy the wider LGBT community. They also believe being anti-gay will deflect questions about their own sexuality.

These sad souls engage in promiscuous anonymous sex because they know if they were to settle down with one true same sex love they wouldn't be able to hide their orientation. Trying to stay in the closet drives them to an endless and risky parade of anonymous sex partners in order to keep their own anonymity.

Because society sets unrealistic boundaries for gay men, men like Wyatt/bad anonymous(particularly religious men) can't help but cross those boundaries by having sex with a man and once they've done that they figure "I've crossed that boundary, I'm an outcast already by having sex with this one man so it doesn't matter how many sex partners I have, I'm going to hell anyway so there's no point in restraining myself.".

So ultimately societies attempt to make sure no one has any same sex sex results in a lot of promiscuous anonymous gay sex as its not realistic to expect gay men to refrain entirely from sex.
When society sets realistic boundaries by telling gay men they are entitled to the same monogamous sex and romance heterosexuals are asked to follow this greatly reduces promiscuity and the sexually transmitted diseases that are associated with it. The research backs this up. In jurisdictions with same sex marriage or civil unions gay men have fewer sexual partners than in places without recognition of same sex unions.

The major mental health istitutions note that gays and lesbians who positively accept their orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not.

Wyatt, here's to hoping that as society becomes more accepting you can learn to accept your own same sex attractions and end your attempts to destroy the innocent gay community and yourself.

May 02, 2015 11:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Baltimore could possibly be the turning point.

Here's a sign of hope things will get better:

Press release:

Baltimore Sees 3,000 Percent Increase In Mentorship Inquiries In 36 Hours

"Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake has reported a record number of mentor inquiries from the Baltimore area following some of the most tumultuous events in the city’s history. In just 36 hours, the organization received more than 250 submissions from adults interested in becoming a mentor to one of the 600-plus children currently on the local waiting list.

This is the largest increase in mentor interest that the local Big Brothers Big Sisters agency has ever experienced. Terry Hickey, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake shared, “We are devastated by what has happened here in Baltimore. It will take strength and time to rebuild our city, and we believe mentorship plays a large role in that.” Hickey added, “Our focus is to connect strong role models looking to make a difference with local youth facing adversity.”

Mentorship has a direct impact on a child’s behavioral outcomes. National research found that after 18 months of spending time with their Bigs, Little Brothers and Little Sisters were 46 percent less likely to use illegal drugs, 27 percent less likely to begin using alcohol, 52 percent less likely to skip school and 33 percent less likely to hit someone, as compared to those children not in the program.

“There is no single solution for what ails many of our nation’s youth. What we do know is that when a young person has a mentor in their life, they make better choices. The positive influence of a mentor can lead to a life filled with direction and optimism about the future,” said Pam Iorio, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. “This outpouring of interest in becoming a mentor in Baltimore reflects the best in our country — people looking for solutions — looking for ways to make life better for others.”

About Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake

Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake (BBBSGC), founded in 1952, is the oldest and largest youth mentoring organization in the State of Maryland. Our agency currently serves more than 1,000 “Littles” in Baltimore City and throughout Central Maryland, along with satellite offices in Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. We help children and youth reach their fullest potential by building safe and enduring mentoring relationships through best practices, quality standards and professional support...

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Chesapeake
For local information:
Terry Hickey, 410-960-1134
CEO
thickey@biglittle.org..."

May 02, 2015 4:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps the real turning point will come when they loot your house and burn your car.

May 03, 2015 8:45 AM  
Anonymous rachel maddow is stupid said...

the President of the U.S.: black

the Attorney General of the U.S.: black

the Baltimore mayor: black

the Baltimore's State's attorney: black

the Baltimore police commissioner: black

the officers who arrested Freddie Gray: of the six, three of them are black

it's a good bet most of the jury in the officers' trial will be black and probably the judge too

lots more to say about Jim's post, I actually have some familiarity with Sandtown, but short on time on this beautifully sunny day, maybe later this evening

but suffice it say that the entire justice system that Freddie Gray was subject to, from enforcement to prosecution, is controlled by blacks

are we saying all blacks who are involved in government are racist against themselves?

sounds like a bigoted point of view

May 03, 2015 11:32 AM  
Anonymous The illegal arrest of Freddie Gray was by three white Baltimore Police Officers said...

The illegal arrest of Freddie Gray was initiated by a white police officer, Lt. Brian Rice, who made eye contact with him and called for back up. Yahoo reports "Records obtained by The Associated Press from a sheriff's department and court show he was hospitalized in April 2012 following concerns about his mental health. Worries about his stability led deputies to confiscate both his official and personal guns, and his commanding officer was called."

Two additional white cops on bicycles, Garrett Miller and Edward Nero, showed up.

As reported by the Baltimore Sun, Kevin Moore who shot one of the videos of Freddie Gray's arrest, "Moore said he found his friend handcuffed, "screaming for his life," and planted face down on the ground with one Baltimore bicycle police officer's knee on his neck and the other bicycle officer bending his legs backward so that Gray's heels were in his back .

"They had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami. He was all bent up," Moore said.

"He said 'I can't breathe. I need a pump,' and they ignored him," Moore said. Gray had asthma...

...When police went to pick Gray off the ground, Moore said his friend had limp legs. His cell phone video shows police carrying Gray to the van, his legs dragging behind him. Gray appears to briefly stand on one leg just before entering the van.

After police loaded him into the van on Presbury Street and drove off, they stopped one block away at Mount and Baker streets to re-restrain Gray with leg irons. Moore said he heard Gray screaming again at that time and raced down the block to get more footage, but by that time, a crowd of police had surrounded the van.

"I didn't see any movement," Moore said. "I saw his body but he wasn't moving.""

May 03, 2015 4:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

do share with us the role of the three black officers who were indicted for murder on Thursday

May 04, 2015 6:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"do share with us the role of the three black officers"

That's your "maybe later this evening" comment?

I already did share the role of all six officers. All you have to do is click on the orange hyperlink above that reads "Yahoo reports" for all the details about the officers and the charges each faces.

Here's a quick summary if the charges against the 3 black officers as reported by Yahoo for the click phobic:

Like the three white officers charged in this case, none of the three black officers charged had secured Freddie Gray with a seat belt in the van nor did any of them get Freddie the medical attention he repeatedly asked for or obviously needed when he was unresponsive on the floor of the van until they got to the police station. Unlike the three white officers, one of the black officers drove the van. He's the one who faces the "depraved heart murder" charge.

NPR has a clear timeline and google map showing the known facts about the approximately hour from Freddie Gray's illegal arrest until he arrived in cardiac arrest at the police station.

May 04, 2015 8:38 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Yes, odd as it may seem, black police officers are often racist against blacks. They adopt the attitudes of the police force in an effort to fit in and see themselves as part of a brotherhood that has each other's backs and considers the wider public all to potentially be "the enemy". I know a black police officer who has taken the position on all the recent cop on black crime that the blacks were all thugs and beyond a shadow of a doubt guilty of crimes that justified their treatment by police.

Its just like you often see women in a professional environment condemn affirmative action programs for women - they think that if they show any consideration for their own group then they are automatically suspect with the working group whose favour they seek.

May 04, 2015 11:51 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I remember back when I was a landlord native Canadians comeing to look at my suites and telling me I shouldn't rent to indians and telling me how horrible indians are. They figured they had to attack their own in order to curry my favour.

May 04, 2015 11:53 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The police brotherhood is a tightly knit group, oftentimes the blacks that join the police see themselves as not a part of the wider black community. They see themselves as part of the honourable working people with unimpeachable character and black citizens as more likely than not unemployed and resorting to crime to get by and ruining the society they've vowed to "protect".

May 04, 2015 11:57 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Its much like I wrote in my first comment - Wyatt/bad anonymous is a member of the LGBT community who engages in the very bad behavior he condemns as typical amongst gay men. Part of him thinks condemning the very behavior he engages in makes him morally superior cause, you know, its different with him, he knows he's "doing wrong" even if he can't control himself.

May 04, 2015 12:00 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Rick "man on dog" Santorum has come a long ways baby.

Discussing the transition of Bruce Jenner from male to female Santorum in a dramatic softening of his rhetoric said "If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman.”

The dramatic change in Santorum's viewpoint is emblamatic of the dramatic culture shift in the U.S. as a whole. Whereas 10 years ago only 39% of Americans supported gay marriage now 61-63% do.

At this rate Wyatt/bad anonymous could soon come out of the closet and apologize for all the harm he's attempted to cause innocent LGBT people in his doomed attempt to suppress his own same sex attractions.

May 04, 2015 12:44 PM  
Anonymous what does Santorum think Randy is? said...

"emblematic"

don't recognize this word

is it some new kind of vinaigrette?

gay "marriage" is a completely different concept than gender identity confusion

any example of Santorum, who I find kind of annoying, saying anything to contradict his current assessment of Jenner?

or are you just loading up the crap, as usual?

you know, whenever some conservative politician turns out to be gay, all the lunatics act like it's some kind of validation

but isn't it really the opposite?

why are there so many gays who infiltrate conservative groups and pretend to be part of it?

another example of lack of character among gays

May 04, 2015 2:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-baltimore-democrats-built/2015/05/04/35be9048-f264-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html

last week, Barack came out and gave his thoughts on the Baltimore riots

he started out well, didn't excuse the rioters and spoke about the importance of letting the law take care of this

then, as usual, he started going political, saying the riots could have been avoided if only Repubs had supported his socialist policy

truth is, the Dems own the whole mess in Baltimore

it's been run by Dems for fifty years

if Sir Barry had an idea that would have saved us from riots, he might have thought to bring up before he became a lame duck

May 04, 2015 2:37 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I'm not aware of anyone that thinks its a validation when an anti-gay conservative politician turns out to be LGBT. Its sad that society makes some people feel so bad about harmless characteristics that they choose to hide who they are behind an anti-gay facade and try to attack the part of themselves they can't accept.

You're the perfect example of that Wyatt. You engage in promiscuous anonymous sex because you know if you were to settle down with one true same sex love You wouldn't be able to hide your orientation. Trying to stay in the closet drives people like you to an endless and risky parade of anonymous sex partners in order to keep your own anonymity.

Because society sets unrealistic boundaries for gay men, religious men like you can't help but cross those boundaries by having sex with a man and once they've done that they figure "I've crossed that boundary, I'm an outcast already by having sex with this one man so it doesn't matter how many sex partners I have, I'm going to hell anyway so there's no point in restraining myself.".

So ultimately societies futile attempt to make sure no one has any same sex sex results in a lot of promiscuous anonymous gay sex as its not realistic to expect gay men to refrain entirely from sex.

When society sets realistic boundaries by telling gay men they are entitled to the same monogamous sex and romance heterosexuals are asked to follow this greatly reduces promiscuity and the sexually transmitted diseases that are associated with it. The research backs this up. In jurisdictions with same sex marriage or civil unions gay men have fewer sexual partners than in places without recognition of same sex unions.

The major mental health istitutions note that gays and lesbians who positively accept their orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not.

Wyatt, here's to hoping that as society becomes more accepting you can learn to accept your own same sex attractions and end your attempts to destroy the innocent gay community and yourself.

May 04, 2015 2:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "why are there so many gays who infiltrate conservative groups and pretend to be part of it? another example of lack of character among gays.

Its not surprising when innocent people who are demeaned and demonized try to hide who they are in order to avoid the abuse. It is rather hypocritical of you to claim this is a lack of character in gays when you are a perfect example of an LGBT person who portrays himself as an anti-gay conservative.

If you want to maximize your happiness you need to stop identifying with your oppressors and break free from your bondage.

May 04, 2015 2:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The democrats have limited influence in cities like Baltimore. The policies of the federal and state governments are more important. Unfortunately in federal, state, and municipal governments Republicans have done everything possible to undermine progress for minorities and they've been pretty successful at it.

The standard republican tactic is to do everything possible to prevent government from working and then when it doesn't work to blame Democrats for its failure. The general public is comprised of low information voters who assume by default when government doesn't work its the fault of the party in power. The media plays into this by presenting a false narrative of balance by making statments such as "Washington is broken" or "Gridlock in Congress" implying that both parties are equally responsible for the failure of government when in reality its almost entirely Republicans who are responsible for government not working.

But what do you expect from a party that insists government is the problem, the government can never make any improvements, government is inherently incompetant and should be cut until its small enough to drown in a bathtub. Republicans don't believe in government and don't want it to succeed. They put tremendous effort into demonizing the poor and trying to portray them as underserving leaches who suck the life out of the hard done by multi-millionaires who just can't get by without the top one percent owning over half of all the wealth in the country. That's why they're constantly introducing laws to make it illegal for food stamps to be used on lobster and seafood - it helps foster the belief that the poor are abusing the system and living high on the hog at the expense of their moral superiors the rich. Of couse this has nothing to do with reality,or saving money and its got nothing to do with preventing the one person in 100,000 from abusing the system. Its designed solely to justify not helping the poor and maximizing the profits of the filthy rich.

Republicans love what's going in in Baltimore and are doing everything they can to make sure it stays that way. Democrats can't make government work when the people across they aisle are doing everything in their power to prevent government from working.

May 04, 2015 3:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

they used too have a tradition in France called topsy-turvy day when, once a year, someone like Priya would be named king and paraded through the streets with a crown and scepter

Democrats have completely controlled Baltimore for 50 years

indeed, they have controlled the state government too

only 1 Republican governor in that time and he was checked by the Dem legislature

Baltimore is the epitome of what happens when the progressive liberal establishment is unrestrained

May 04, 2015 3:31 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

If the progressive liberal establishment was unrestrained Baltimore would be a paradise.

Republicans believe government is the problem, government is always incompetent, they don't want government to work and and they do their very best to stop it from working. Baltimore is the legacy of anti-government Republicans.

Strange how Republicans think government is evil and destructive but yet they keep trying to become the government. I guess they know that if they are part of goverment they can ensure its evil, ineffective, and destructive.

May 04, 2015 4:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The major mental health istitutions note that gays and lesbians who positively accept their orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not.

Wyatt, here's to hoping that as society becomes more accepting you can learn to accept your own same sex attractions and end your attempts to destroy the innocent gay community and yourself.

Its time you stopped being yet another self-loathing anti-gay conservative. If you consider it a character flaw for gays to belong to conservative groups and be staunchly anti-gay then its time you corrected that character flaw of yours.

Some LGBT people will never forgive you for the harm you've done but most of us will accept you with open arms once you repent. I know you like to pretend it reflects badly on gays that less than 100% will accept you as one of their own but no group is ever 100% accepting of a reformed traitor and certainly no group is as forgiving as the LGBT community. Its a testament to how great the LGBT community is that most of us will forgive you once you repent.

May 04, 2015 4:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Perhaps the real turning point will come when they loot your house and burn your car."

"if Sir Barry had an idea that would have saved us from riots, he might have thought to bring up before..."

How soon they forget!

"[F]reedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here...While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime," he said. "And I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... (who wouldn't) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom."

Donald Rumsfeld, in his own words, April 11, 2003

May 04, 2015 5:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"A majority of Americans back the decision to bring criminal charges against six Baltimore police officers for the death of Freddie Gray, a new Pew Research survey finds.

Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died in April after sustaining a fatal neck injury while in police custody, touching off days of protests in Baltimore.

Sixty-five percent say that Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby made the right decision to file charges against the officers, while just 16 percent said she made the wrong decision. Another 18 percent were undecided.

Support for the charges transcends racial lines for the most part -- and political lines, though to a lesser extent. Sixty percent of whites and 78 percent of blacks said charging the officers was the right decision. Although Democrats were 30 points more likely than Republicans to support the charges, members of the GOP were still more likely than not to say it was the right decision.

While Americans are relatively united in their reaction to the charges, the survey makes clear that deep divides remain on the issues surrounding the unrest that followed Gray's death. Democrats are most likely to cite tensions between the black community and police as contributing toward the violence in Baltimore, while Republicans are most likely to fault "people taking advantage to engage in criminal behavior."..."

May 04, 2015 6:15 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

of course people support the charges

someone died under suspicious circumstances

a trial is needed to get to the facts

it's hard to see racism when the officers involved either are blacks, or work with blacks, and work for blacks, and are judged by blacks

truth is, the problem is twofold: poverty, which cuts across racial lines, and a police mentality

let's face it: if a white made eye contact with a cop in Sandtown, regardless of whether the cop is black and white, and then ran, he would be chased down

if he kept screaming and kicking around when apprehended, the police would tend to use excessive force to subdue him

it's the way it works

racial relations is America are great

problem is, since Obama was elected, liberals are scared they will lose an issue they've gotten so much mileage out of

it's just hard to push the racist America charge when a black man has been elected President and re-elected and was initially uncommonly popular

so, since Obama was elected we have had a series of these stories because they need racism to motivate their supporters

btw, lazy Priya: "Some LGBT people will never forgive you for the harm you've done"

I haven't noticed any anonymous poster seeking forgiveness for telling the truth but let's hear about all the "harm" that's been done

is it like how all the Republicans are responsible for poverty in Baltimore, where Dems have had control for half a century?

May 04, 2015 11:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"let's face it: if a white made eye contact with a cop in Sandtown, regardless of whether the cop is black and white, and then ran, he would be chased down"

Try facing the truth for a change.

Your claim is easily disproven by some video clips Larry Wilmore showed last night on his Nightly Show. He showed two different clips of Baltimore Police officers dealing with blacks and whites who violated the 10 PM curfew.

The white curfew violators were told by a Baltimore policeman, "So me a favor guys. The last thing I want to do is put someone in handcuffs. All right? And I'm actually going to ask you now to please leave 'cause the last thing I want to do is put someone in handcuffs," while a single black man violating the curfew while standing with his arms to his sides, pulling up his pants facing police officers was pepper sprayed in his face from maybe 5 feet away and then he was thrown on his back to the ground.

Which ones do you think got a ride in a paddy wagon to jail?

Roll the videotape by clicking the link. Save time and start the videotape at 7:25: http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/wvzupc/the-nightly-show-may-4--2015---baltimore-unrest---the-origins-of-racism-season-1-ep-01052

It's a nice fantasy you have that whites and blacks are treated the same by cops, but that's all it is, a fantasy.

It's time every one of us faced the truth for a change.

May 05, 2015 10:02 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

In another local story (much less dramatic and heartbreaking than Baltimore), the Fairfax County School Board will be voting May 7 to add Gender Identity to its nondiscrimination policy. They added Sexual Orientation last fall.

There may be an article in the Post. Here is the link to the article from two weeks ago, when the board brought it up as new business:

Fairfax Schools Nondiscrimination Policy

May 05, 2015 10:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Baltimore police force is the one thing entirely in the hands of the local Baltimore city government; in liberal, progressive Dem hands for five decades and counting. They have failed at the one thing they are charged with: protecting the most vulnerable in society.

There are three ways the welfare state has failed the poor it was supposed to help:

1. government redistribution of wealth has replaced families and fathers

2. community organizing and government programs are favored over private enterprise

3. failing public schools are propped up as a jobs program for teacher unions rather than instituting school choice, giving the poor an alternative to the grim reality their kids face

until liberal progressive Dems seek these solutions, the future of the youth in Baltimore's poor neighborhoods will continue to be dreams of insufficient government checks rather than careers

none of this has anything to do with race

it is the consequence of the false hope of an entitlement, wealth distribution state

own up to what you've done here

May 05, 2015 10:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You're the one who said Baltimore cops would treat black and white law breakers the same.

Here's your quote:

"let's face it: if a white made eye contact with a cop in Sandtown, regardless of whether the cop is black and white, and then ran, he would be chased down"

I have provided video tape showing white Baltimore City police officers treating white and black curfew violators very differently -- a group of white violators got a reasonable request to leave that included the word "please," and a single black man violator got pepper sprayed in the face and taken down to the ground with force.

Own up to your fantasy.

Baltimore City cops most certainly do not treat white and black violators the same.

You also provided nothing to back up your continued fantasies.

"1. government redistribution of wealth has replaced families and fathers"

Black men being illegally arrested and thrown in jail like Freddie Gray was has a lot to do with missing fathers in black families.

"2. community organizing and government programs are favored over private enterprise"

For most of its two-decade existence the Baltimore Development Corporation strenuously resisted all public inquiry and oversight, a tradition inherited from its predecessors that originated as private business-led entities performing tasks under contract with Baltimore City. These private companies should invite public inquiry and oversight -- they should operate in disinfecting daylight.

"3. failing public schools are propped up as a jobs program for teacher unions rather than instituting school choice, giving the poor an alternative to the grim reality their kids face"

You don't know much about Baltimore schools. Every Baltimore City public school student has the right to choose which middle or high school they attend.

**************************

Robert,

Here's the most recent article in WaPo I could find on this important FCPS Board vote to include gender identity in its nondiscrimination protection.

Thank you for letting us know the vote will take place on Thursday May 7.

I hope many folks turn out to support it and it passes just like FCPS Board voted to add Sexual Orientation to its nondiscrimination policy last November.

May 05, 2015 1:31 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Yes, come and support at FCPS meeting. It's at 7 p.m. on Thursday May 7 at Luther Jackson Middle School at 3020 Gallows Rd., Falls Church VA I'll be there about 6:20 with pink equality signs to hold up in the meeting.

rrjr

May 05, 2015 2:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the time has arrived

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/05/05/in-arkansas-huckabee-launches-second-white-house-bid/21179925/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D91556798

May 05, 2015 2:14 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Everytime someone has looked at the statistics on it police are several times more likely to pull over a black driver than a white driver and when they do pull someone over a black driver is several times more likely than a white driver to be charged with a drug related crime although statistics show blacks and whites use and sell drugs at about the same right.

Its unquestionably true that police treat blacks and whites a great deal differently

May 05, 2015 3:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Just do a search for:

probability police black driver white driver

doesn't matter where you look

May 05, 2015 3:25 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous returns to his buffoonery. He so liked us rubbing his face in it the last time he told us about "president Huckabee, president Huckabee" he's doing it again.

Hey Wyatt, if you don't think self-loathing gays should "infiltrate conservative groups and pretend to be a part of it" then why are you spouting conservative rhetoric? Do you have a character flaw along the lines you accused those gays of having?

Just kidding. We all know you're suffering from stockholm syndrome and trying to destroy your same sex attractions you hate by trying to destroy the LGBT community.

May 05, 2015 3:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

do statistics tell whether, on average, blacks and whites respond to authority figures in the same way?

personally, I can't imagine who would think it smart to make eye contact with the cops and start running

isn't that acting suspicious?

I'd agree cops take themselves a little too seriously but shouldn't kids be taught smart ways to deal with them?

are there any factors in our society that cause blacks, not all, but on average, to act differently toward police?

the problem is that people need to make judgments based on likelihood in order to survive

that's why black cab drivers are reluctant to pick up young black males in certain parts of cities

it's obviously unfair to those young blacks who aren't dangerous but forcing cab drivers to play Russian roulette with unknown customers is also unfair to them

as always, life is more complicated than a stat- swallowing TTFer can imagine

May 05, 2015 3:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

someone has apparently hit the bull's eye on lazy Priya, who seems particular threatened by the observation that gays seem to be drawn to secretly infiltrating conservative groups and then using the fact that they're there to discredit the groups

it's just a characteristic, like random promiscuity and a desire to seek danger, that seems to go hand-in-hand with homosexuality

May 05, 2015 3:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

That's pretty hilarious Wyatt coming from a self-loathing gay who engages in anonymous promiscuous gay sex in order to stay in the closet.

You're just like all the anti-gay policitians who turn out to be gay themselves. No one who is completely heterosexual is as obsessed with gays as you.

May 05, 2015 4:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Of course. Police target them in greatly disproportionate numbers compared to their population percentage. Police go out of their way to charge them with crimes and use excessive force in those arrests. Freddy Gray's treatment by the police is the perfect example of that. Legal experts say unning from the police does not give them probable cause to stop a person.

May 05, 2015 4:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "are we saying all blacks who are involved in government are racist against themselves?"

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "that's why black cab drivers are reluctant to pick up young black males in certain parts of cities"

So, once again we see the position Wyatt/bad anonymous takes on any issue changes 180 degrees depending on what he finds the most immediately useful in trying to deceive people.

Wyatt has no problem with contradicting himself if he finds doing so expedient albeit dishonest.

We see him contradicting himself over and over and over because he is fundamentally dishonest to the core That's what you call a character flaw.

But we can forgive you Wyatt. We know its the cognitive dissonance of attacking gays when you are same sex attracted yourself that drives you to such twisted behavior

May 05, 2015 4:35 PM  
Anonymous is Priya insane? said...

"Of course. Police target them in greatly disproportionate numbers compared to their population percentage."

But do a large number of young black males act in ways disproportionate to their population percentage?

Maybe there's a reason other than sheer racism.

Not saying that's fair to those who don't act in those ways, or even to those who do.

Still, it's more complicated than that they don't like the way certain people look.

"Police go out of their way to charge them with crimes and use excessive force in those arrests."

and why would they "go out of their way"?

you simplistic assertions are actually the essence of ignorant stereotyping

"Freddy Gray's treatment by the police is the perfect example of that."

they didn't "go out of their way"

it's an area with thousands of blacks who didn't get arrested and treated as Gray

not saying the police actions were justified

there's just more to the story than the fantasies of liberals

"Legal experts say unning from the police does not give them probable cause to stop a person."

And I agree with the legal experts but, in real life, police try to keep neighborhoods safe and when someone acts suspiciously in such a dangerous area, you can't be surprised

can't reminds me of last year when some transgender was attacked and TTFers were screaming about attacks on these poor folk

of course, it turned out the idiot was walking through Southeast DC alone at 2:30 in the morning

no sane person would do that, just as no sane person would go to a dangerous area, stare at the cops and take off running

May 05, 2015 4:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"personally, I can't imagine who would think it smart to make eye contact with the cops and start running

isn't that acting suspicious?"


It is not illegal no matter what the color of your skin is.

I'd agree cops take themselves a little too seriously but shouldn't kids be taught smart ways to deal with them?

Kids who grow up in urban poverty are often exposed to lead paint which renders them less smart than kids who grow up in the middle class or higher.

Freddie Gray’s life a study on the effects of lead paint on poor blacks:

"...It was worst in the front room, where Gray bedded down most nights with his mother, he recalled years later in a deposition.

“There was a big hole when you go up the steps,” Gray recalled in 2009. “There was a couple of walls that wasn’t painted all the way, peeled. . . . And like the windows, paint was peeling off the windows.”

Before Freddie Gray was injured in police custody last month, before he died and this city was plunged into rioting, his life was defined by failures in the classroom, run-ins with the law and an inability to focus on anything for very long.

Many of those problems began when he was a child and living in this house, according to a 2008 lead-poisoning lawsuit filed by Gray and his siblings against the property owner...

(...Gray and his two sisters were found to have damaging lead levels in their blood..."


Black Children Face The Most Barriers To Success In America, Asians The Least:

"...Gaps between groups’ achievements start small in early childhood milestones, like percentages of babies born at normal birth weight, and children enrolled in pre-K, but the differences widen in neighborhood milestones, like percentages of children living in low-poverty areas..."

"are there any factors in our society that cause blacks, not all, but on average, to act differently toward police?

Yes. It's the cops' long record of mistreating blacks and arresting innocent people like Freddie Gray, who did nothing illegal to warrant his arrest.

Racial gap in U.S. arrest rates: 'Staggering disparity':

"...At least 1,581 other police departments across the USA arrest black people at rates even more skewed than in Ferguson, a USA TODAY analysis of arrest records shows. That includes departments in cities as large and diverse as Chicago and San Francisco and in the suburbs that encircle St. Louis, New York and Detroit..."

May 05, 2015 4:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Repbulicans like Paul Ryan love talking about poverty but keep getting the basic facts wrong

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is back to talking about poverty, taking to CBS's Face the Nation this past weekend to lay out his plans for tackling it. Some of his ideas on the topic are worthwhile — he's right that the Earned Income Tax Credit needs to be increased — and the fact that a major national politician has taken an interest in the topic at all is a cheering development.

But for all Ryan's rhetoric on poverty, he's also the author of a series of budgets that would absolutely wreck programs for the American poor, inflicting massive human suffering on the nation's most vulnerable residents. It's never been exactly clear how Ryan would resolve this tension, but his appearance on Face the Nation suggests he's going to try to make his poverty programs work with his budgets‚ which is to say he's going to argue that taking trillions away from the poor is somehow actually good for them.

It doesn't help that the first policy statement he makes is an out-and-out lie:

"After a 50-year war on poverty and trillions of dollars spent, we still have the same poverty rates.".

This sentence suggests that either Paul Ryan has absolutely no clue how poverty rates work, or he does know and is actively deceiving viewers. First of all, the specific claim in question isn't even technically accurate. The poverty rate was 19 percent in 1964, when the War on Poverty was announced. In 2013, it was 14.5 percent. We do not have the same poverty rates we did then. Ryan is just wrong.

May 05, 2015 5:00 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

But even that dramatically understates the progress that has been made. The official poverty rate is a travesty of a statistic, and using it at all in this context is irresponsible. It's literally based on food prices in 1955. But more relevantly for these purposes, it excludes the very anti-poverty programs Ryan is talking about. It excludes in-kind transfers like Medicaid, food stamps, and housing vouchers, as well as tax-based programs like the EITC. Blasting those programs because they don't show up in the poverty rate is like arguing that Netflix shows have zero viewers by pointing to cable ratings.

A much better metric, which takes anti-poverty programs fully into account and is based on more recent data, is known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure. The SPM factors in government programs, and is based on current data about spending on food and other necessities. It's the poverty rate people like Ryan should be referencing."

The researchers found that anchored SPM (the blue line below) has fallen dramatically in recent decades. But if you take out government programs, you get the green line below, which doesn't fall at all. Poverty — measured accurately, in a way that includes the government programs Ryan is trying to evaluate — fell, and it fell entirely because of government programs:

"After accounting for taxes and transfers, poverty falls by approximately 40 percent, from 26 percent to 16 percent," write Wimer et al. Absent those programs, poverty actually would have increased slightly.

Ryan knows about the Supplemental Poverty Rate — he was criticized for this exact poverty rate sleight of hand in the past. But that makes what Ryan went on to say on Face the Nation even more bizarre:

"It's really not a more money thing, it's 'spend the money we have more effectively.' … It's not a function of pumping more money into the same failed system, because we'll only get the same failed result."

May 05, 2015 5:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It's true that efficient things are better than inefficient things. But we don't have a failed system. We have a system that, while flawed in certain respects, has nonetheless succeeded in cutting poverty by 40 percent relative to 1967. Pumping more money into that system would cut poverty even more. Ryan recognizes this when it comes to the EITC, but he doesn't (or pretends not to) get it at all where other programs are concerned.

But Ryan doesn't just want to spend the money we're currently spending more efficiently. He wants to cut that spending by trillions of dollars In total, his budget includes $3.3 trillion in cuts to programs for low- and medium-income people.

This is not the budget of a man committed to fighting poverty. It's the budget of someone who wants a smaller government, a lower deficit, no new taxes, and a gigantic army and has decided to make all those other promises work out by massively cutting programs for the poor. The simple fact of Ryan's budgets is that they prove he doesn't take poverty all that seriously.

That's the basic problem Ryan — and other conservatives, like David Brooks — dance around when talking about poverty. Poverty is about not having enough money. Everything else is secondary. Ryan expresses a desire to address the "root causes" of poverty, not the "symptoms." But it's a bad metaphor. Sure, there are deeper reasons behind why certain people at certain times don't have enough money. Sluggish income growth for the working poor in recent years is the big one in the US. But you can, and should, fix poverty even if you can't fix all those other issues.

There's a lot the government can't do. It can't force poor people into marriages, for example. It can't singlehandedly reverse decades of technology and globalization-driven trends in the labor market. But it's pretty good at taking rich and middle-class people's money and giving it to poor people. And while there's much that tactic can't do, it absolutely can help people in poverty put food on the table, pay rent, and make sure they can take care of their children. It can even lift them out of poverty entirely.

May 05, 2015 5:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I said "Of course. Police target them in greatly disproportionate numbers compared to their population percentage."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "But do a large number of young black males act in ways disproportionate to their population percentage? Maybe there's a reason other than sheer racism.".

You're the one making that assertion. In accepted intellectual debate the onus is on you to prove your assertion, not on the skeptic to disprove it.

We know racism is pervasive and after initially denying it you admitted yourself that blacks can be racist towards blacks (particularly when they are in a police force that defines them as upright and good and black citizens as uncaught criminals).

We don't need any additional explanations to account for the disproportianate treatment of blacks by the police. Stupidly asserting that there's some other reason for poor treatment of blacks by police doesn't establish that there is some other reason.

The U.S. has a long and storied history of mistreating black people just because of the colour of their skin. Absent any corroborating evicence its just stupid to claim its the fault of the blacks that police abuse them disproportionately.

Of course you make the same argument about LGBT community, blaiming them for societies abuse of them. You're like the schoolyard bully stealing a kid's lunch money, punching him and then asserting the victims distress is proof of the victims character flaws.

May 05, 2015 5:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

racism is not pervasive, and it's insurmountable

the people in Sandtown can't catch a break because they're poor

it's not because they're black

there are white areas in Appalachia that are almost identical

the black mayor in Baltimore and the black police commissioner and the black police officers aren't arresting Freddie Gray because he's black

if so, why don't they arrest each other?

there was something different and it wasn't his race

they are many blacks in Sandtown that didn't get arrested

May 05, 2015 7:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"and it's insurmountable"

should have said "not insurmountable"

May 05, 2015 9:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the black police officers aren't arresting Freddie Gray because he's black

No black police officers arrested Freddie for any reason.

Not a single black Baltimore City police officer was involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray.

The three black officers arrested along with the three white officers, were involved in transporting Freddie from the scene of his arrest by the three white officers to the police station.

Three white Baltimore City police officers illegally arrested Freddie Gray.

Lt. Brian Rice, along with Officers Garrett Miller and Edward Nero arrested Freddie Gray.

These three white Baltimore City police officers folded Freddie up like "origami" according to witness Kevin Moore.

Then all three white police officers dragged a rather limp and moaning Freddie to the police van as seen and heard in the video by the witness Kevin Moore.

Freddie was found to have no pulse when the van finally arrived at the police station.

May 06, 2015 11:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Supreme Court Refuses an Appeal of New Jersey’s Ex-Gay Therapy on Minors Ban

The appeal, brought by religious conservative group Liberty Counsel and called King v. Christie, attempted to overturn a lower court ruling that said New Jersey’s law banning ex-gay therapy being used on children is constitutional.

The legislation was signed into law by Governor Chris Christie in 2013–Christie is of course now a Republican presidential hopeful. The legislation was immediately challenged in court by religious conservatives who want to preserve the discredited practice of conversion therapy.

Among other arguments, Liberty Counsel has argued that the ban infringes therapists’ protected speech, that it infringes the rights of young people to “get help” for “unwanted same-sex attraction” and, as an adjunct, the right of parents to seek therapy for their children.

The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals recognized that this law does place some limits on speech and therapeutic conduct, but that it does so with the legitimate government aim of protecting minors from potential harm. In so doing, the Court of Appeals recognized that ex-gay therapy is not a practice that mainstream medical authorities condone.

This is the second time the Supreme Court has declined to hear a case relating to an ex-gay therapy law, the first being a challenge to California’s ban that similarly prevents therapists from trying ex-gay therapy on children. The refusal to hear this case was given without comment, but it remains a significant blow for the Right who, with the challenge to New Jersey’s law, seemed to try slightly different arguments than in the California case, possibly in order to catch the Court’s attention, but the Court did not find a constitutional question surrounding ex-gay therapy bans.


May 06, 2015 11:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The religious conservative wing of the Republican party has made a concerted effort to attack trans rights this year but it is failing, particularly when it comes to anti-trans bills that would affect school children.

Last week the Democrat-controlled Minnesota Senate voted down a proposal that would have prevented trans students using showers and bathrooms that accord with their gender identity. The restriction was supposed to, as the Republican-led House and Senate supporters put it, help promote safety in locker rooms and showers but there haven’t been any reported problems over the existing rules being used to endanger or otherwise harm students. In essence, this was an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist and one that risked demonizing trans kids for no good reason.

The Senate rejected the measure 40-25 with three Republicans also voting the proposal down.

We previously brought you news that after an outcry from people like the Care2 community, Kentucky withdrew a similar amendment that had been proposed in the state Senate (unfortunately thereby tanking a much needed education reform bill to boot). That legislation had been widely protested as scaremongering and derisive, and something that many moderate conservatives said was unnecessary and harmful. The bill’s failure was celebrated by LGBT rights groups, and in terms of protecting trans rights the good news keeps coming.

Florida’s disgusting anti-trans bill that would have made trans people criminals for using the restroom or public accommodations matching their gender identity as opposed to their birth sex died last week, and with the legislative session over the bill cannot be revived, at least for now.

The legislation, known as HB 583 or the “Single-Sex Public Facilities,” would have led to trans people being given a first-degree misdemeanor charge, a $1,000 fine and/or up to one year in jail. As we previously discussed, the legislation was retaliation for a Miami-Dade County ordinance that sought to protect trans people from discrimination. This is a doubly important victory because the Florida legislation and the resulting backlash seemed to be the inspiration for other similar pieces of legislation cropping up in other states. As such, the bill failing may knock the confidence of other states like Texas which are currently flirting with similar bans.

Other victories that may have gone unnoticed in the busy first few months of the year include that California’s landmark law — which protects trans students and affirming their rights to access facilities, school programs and teams that accord with their gender identity — is safe for another year after an attempt to repeal the law failed to qualify for the ballot, and, with each passing year since it was enshrined in 2014, that legislation looks increasingly more likely to be sticking around for good.

To be sure, it hasn’t been all good news so far this year. An attempt to reform the ID change process for trans people in Colorado was killed by Republicans in the state legislature, and efforts in other states to enshrine discrimination still persist, sometimes specifically targeting trans people and sometimes in the form of religious privilege bills.

However, the failure of the bills that would have enshrined anti-trans discrimination shows that, while there is a long way to go for achieving equality for trans people, if the ultra conservative wing of the Republican party thought that it could easily translate its anti-gay animus to an anti-trans cause it most certainly is failing in that effort. It also shows however that even as our focus falls on marriage equality as that issue goes before the Supreme Court, we have to also keep the pressure on to ensure that any victory there does not come at the expense of pushing for and protecting trans rights.


Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/it-seems-the-gops-anti-trans-scaremongering-is-a-big-failure.html#ixzz3ZNCJtDnH

May 06, 2015 11:34 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Good anonymous, thanks for the update on trans equality, I wasn't aware of most of this stuff.

The hatred of the innocents runs deep in these people.

May 06, 2015 1:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "it's not because they're black
there was something different and it wasn't his race".

You keep making that assertion and failing to back it up.

Blacks are stopped in great disproportion to their representation of the population. Blacks and whites use and sell drugs at the same rate yet the vast majority of drug charges are against black people.

Its emminently plausible that blacks are treated unfairly because of racism, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that blacks have been treated unfairly due to racism many times in the past. I know from personal experience people from a minority will sometimes be racist against their own minority in order to curry favour with another group, such as a police organization. You said yourself that black taxi drivers often discriminate against young black fares.

You express the novel idea that blacks are discriminated against because of something blacks do but don't offer a plausible example of what that might be.

So, go ahead, speculate. Give us a plausible example of how blacks themselves might be triggering police to stop and arrest them disproportionately. Are you going to suggest blacks unjustifiably act paranoid around police and that leads police to stop them far more often than white people? And if that's the case, what initially lead black people to feel paranoid about the police? Are you going to honestly suggest there's some reason black people feel paranoid about the police other than the police have disproportionately targeted and abused them in the past?

Come on, tell us. Give us a plausible scenario where black people are doing something that causes police to stop and arrest them disproportionately when they don't do or sell drugs any more often than whites. Tell us how that behavior that provokes police into stopping and arresting them came into being in the first place.

Don't just keep giving us this lame ass "I don't know why the police disproportionately target blacks but its not because of racism". Give us a plausible scenario that accounts for this disproportionate response if its not racism.

May 06, 2015 1:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I'm not even asking you to prove your assertion, just to give us a plausible scenario where we can say "Maybe that's true".

If you can't even do that then its time you just admitted that the only plausible reason for this is racism.

May 06, 2015 1:21 PM  
Anonymous No MCPS students have been harmed by the revised sex ed curriculum, however...... said...

Teen chlamydia epidemic rages in sex ed-shunning Texas school district

A west Texas school district has confirmed nearly two dozen cases of chlamydia among high school students, at a small-town campus that — surprise! — endorses an abstinence-only sex education program, but does not officially offer sex ed.

At least 20 cases of chlamydia among students at Crane High School were reported to the Crane Independent School District last week, after the Texas Department of State Health Services alerted district officials to the high rate of cases reported in the surrounding counties. According to CBS affiliate KOSA, the district notified Crane High School parents on Monday of the “growing problem,” which so far affects a significant percentage of the school’s nearly 300 students. Crane ISD also informed parents of middle school students about the outbreak, although it is currently contained to high schoolers.

“Honestly I don’t want my kid growing up in an area where nasty stuff like that happens,” Crane resident Edward Martinez told KWES.

As Raw Story uncovered, Crane ISD’s current student handbook states that the district “does not offer a curriculum in human sexuality,” but allows for instructors to cover the topic in other classes. Parents, however, are free to remove their students from a school sex education course without penalty.

Should teachers provide sex ed at a Crane public school, it must be in accordance with Texas’ statewide guidelines, which emphasize abstinence as “the preferred choice of behavior in relationship to all sexual activity for unmarried persons of school age.” Specifically, instructors may use Scott & White’s “Worth the Wait” Abstinence Plus curriculum, which the district’s school health advisory committee officially recommended in 2012. The same advisory committee that recommended the optional abstinence-plus curriculum reportedly plans to meet on Monday to discuss how best to address the chlamydia outbreak.

Left untreated, chlamydia can pose serious threats to a patient’s fertility and make it impossible for a woman to become pregnant. In 2012, Texas ranked 13th in infection rates for the STI nationally, according to CDC estimates. The state also ranked 13th and 6th in infection rates for gonorrhea and syphilis, respectively.

May 06, 2015 1:28 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the black mayor in Baltimore and the black police commissioner and the black police officers aren't arresting Freddie Gray because he's black if so, why don't they arrest each other?".

Because they've distinguished themselves as seperate from ordinary black people by virtue of their high office or membership in the police force. Being part of those organizations casts legitimacy on those people and marks them as members of the "good guys" so they have no desire to arrest black police officers, black police commissioners, or black mayors absent evidence of real wrongdoing. Once a black person becomes a police officer their loyalty is first to the police orgnazation that has granted them legitimacy, not to their own race who are almost entirely part of the "could be a criminal" general public.

May 06, 2015 1:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More good news for Priya:

"NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (AP) — Smith College, the largest of the all-female Seven Sisters schools, is changing its policy to accept transgender women.

The new policy, which takes effect for those applying this fall, followed a year of study. The women’s college had previously asked undergraduates to have consistently identified as female since birth.

Smith President Kathleen McCartney and board Chair Elizabeth Mugar Eveillard said in announcing the change on Saturday since Smith’s founding, “concepts of female identity have evolved.”

Smith will not admit students who were born female but identify as male.

Other women’s colleges, including Mount Holyoke and Wellesley, also have changed their policies to admit transgender women.

The advocacy group GLAAD said it worked with Smith alumnae for the change. GLAAD President and CEO Kate Ellis said Smith joins a growing number of colleges that “respect and afford equal opportunity to all women.”


I guess this next one is bad news for Anon, who has long thought MCPS students would be harmed by the revised sex education curriculum and yet to date, none has.

Here's what's happening in an "abstinence only" sex education state, Texas:

Teen chlamydia epidemic rages in sex ed-shunning Texas school district:
Nearly 10 percent of Crane HS students have an STI, but the state still endorses abstinence-only education


...Left untreated, chlamydia can pose serious threats to a patient’s fertility and make it impossible for a woman to become pregnant. In 2012, Texas ranked 13th in infection rates for the STI nationally, according to CDC estimates. The state also ranked 13th and 6th in infection rates for gonorrhea and syphilis, respectively.

May 06, 2015 1:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

BALTIMORE (AP) - One of the Baltimore police officers who arrested Freddie Gray has challenged police and a top prosecutor to produce a knife that prompted the arrest, arguing in a court motion that it is an illegal weapon.

Attorneys filed the motion in Baltimore District Court for Officer Edward Nero, who is charged with second-degree assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment. The motion challenges the basis for charges Nero faces after the arrest of Gray, a black man who died a week after suffering a severe spinal injury in police custody.

Last Friday, Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged Nero and the others just a day after receiving the investigative report from the police department. Mosby said the officers had unlawfully arrested Gray because the knife he had in his pocket is considered legal.

Marc Zayon, Nero's attorney, argued in the motion filed Monday that the knife in Gray's pocket - described in charging documents as "a spring assisted, one hand operated knife" - is in fact illegal under state law. Maryland, he said, defines a knife as unlawful if it opens automatically by pushing a button, spring or other device in the handle.

The charges against the officers came near the close of a turbulent week in which violence, looting and fires erupted in the streets only hours after Gray's funeral that Monday.

But some lawyers including Andy Alperstein, who has represented police officers but is not involved in the Gray case, said those charges can only be proven if Gray was wrongly arrested. If the knife was illegal, "there is no case" against Nero and another officer, he said.

"If the facts were that the knife was illegal then the Gray arrest would be justified. Even if it wasn't illegal and the officers acted in good faith, it would be the same result. All charges fail," Alperstein said.

Some spring-assisted knives are opened by pushing a thumb stud attached to the blade.

Police said officers chased Gray two blocks after making eye contact with him and subsequently found the knife in his pocket.

The Associated Press has made repeated requests to the police department for a physical description of the knife as well as photographs.

Nero and Officer Garrett Miller are charged with misdemeanors. Four others - Sgt. Alicia White, Lt. Brian Rice and officers Caesar Goodson and William Porter - are charged with felonies ranging from manslaughter to second-degree "depraved-heart" murder.

Both officers charged with only misdemeanors are white. All black officers are charged with felonies. I this an indication of discrimination? Under liberal logic: yes.

May 06, 2015 2:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

it's an interesting question:

liberals are all celebrating because a prosecutor charged some cops after one day considering the evidence

also, they say that the fact that blacks are arrested and charged more frequently than whites is proof of racism

yet, here, in a circumstance they are celebrating when out of six officers, the most serious charges are against three blacks and one white while the less serious charges are against two whites and no blacks

under your logic, isn't this process racist?

should it be thrown out?

was Freddie Gray, who the media has portrayed as someone who was a probable future Nobel Peace Prize winner, carrying a concealed illegal weapon?

why won't the police let anyone see the evidence?

May 06, 2015 2:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"liberals are all celebrating because a prosecutor charged some cops after one day considering the evidence"

For those of us who heard Attorney General Mosby's news conference last Friday know you have got your facts wrong.

Far from spending "one day" considering the evidence, on May 1, 2015, Attorney General Mosby announced:

"...Once alerted about this incident on April 13, investigators from my police integrity unit were deployed to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Gray’s apprehension. Over the course of our independent investigation, in the untimely death of Mr. Gray, my team worked around the clock; 12 and 14 hour days to canvas and interview dozens of witnesses; view numerous hours of video footage; repeatedly reviewed and listened to hours of police video tape statements; surveyed the route, reviewed voluminous medical records; and we leveraged the information made available by the police department, the community and family of Mr. Gray.

The findings of our comprehensive, thorough and independent investigation, coupled with the medical examiner's determination that Mr. Gray’s death was a homicide that we received today, has led us to believe that we have probable cause to file criminal charges..."


" out of six officers, the most serious charges are against three blacks and one white while the less serious charges are against two whites and no blacks"

Once again you are mistaken. The most serious charges are against one black officer and all three white officers:

".... The driver of the police van, officer Caesar Goodson Jr, who is African American, faces the most severe charge of second-degree murder.

Officer William Porter and sergeant Alicia D White were charged with manslaughter, assault and misconduct. They are also black.

Lieutenant Brian Rice, officer Garrett Miller and officer Edward Nero were charged with manslaughter, assault, misconduct and false imprisonment..."


So the charges against the six Baltimore City police officers are as follows:

Second degree murder - 1 black cop

Manslaughter, assault, misconduct and false imprisonment - 3 white cops

Manslaughter, assault, and misconduct - 2 black cops

The most serious charge in this case, murder in the second degree, is against the black driver of the van.

The second most serious charges in this case, manslaughter, assault, misconduct and false imprisonment, are against all 3 white cops.

The least serious charges in this case, manslaughter, assault, and misconduct, are against 2 black cops.

May 06, 2015 4:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Global Carbon Dioxide Levels Topped 400 PPM Throughout March In Unprecedented Milestone

Atlantic Hurricane Season May Start Early With Possible Coastal Threat to Carolinas

May 06, 2015 5:30 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Global Carbon Dioxide Levels Topped 400 PPM Throughout March In Unprecedented Milestone"

leads one to believe this doesn't cause global warming since temperatures have remained stable since before the turn of the millenium

"Atlantic Hurricane Season May Start Early With Possible Coastal Threat to Carolinas"

when something "may" happen, that's not a story

immediately following Katrina, we warned, alarmingly, about the horrible hurricane activity coming

never happened

the period since has been the most hurricane free in recorded history on the east coast

looks like alarmists are going to have to find another bell to ring

May 06, 2015 10:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great article, Robert!

For transgender teens and teachers, acceptance could be two words away

May 07, 2015 8:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The most serious charge in this case, murder in the second degree, is against the black driver of the van."

proof positive that the prosecutor is racially biased, under current liberal logic

facts don't matter, only the percentage of racial representation relative to the races' proportion of the general population


May 07, 2015 9:02 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It is quite simply a desperate lie that global temperatures have remained steady since before the turn of the century. Global atmospheric temperatures have continued to rise albeit at a slower rate than they had prior to that time. The rate of temperature increase in the global climate as a whole, including oceans and land masses has grown considerably more and is growing at an accelerating pace. The atmosphere represents only 2% of the global heat sync capacity of the environment.

If global warming had stopped in 1998 (or the globe had started cooling since then as Wyatt/bad anonymous sometimes contradictorally claims) sea levels wouldn't have continued to rise since then and rise at an accelerating pace as they have.

May 07, 2015 1:48 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

So to sum up Wyatt/bad anonymous's position on the relationship between police and blacks:

He asserts there can be no racism in the Baltimore police department because the U.S. president, the U.S. attorney general, the baltimore mayor and baltimore police commissioner are black. Like its not possible for a majority white police force to be racist if distantly related officials aren't. No one hates their boss, amirite? Everyone in an organization is a mirror image of the attitudes and beliefs of its leader, amirite?

But then he contradicts himself and says black taxi drivers are racist and won't pick up young black men.

Despite the presence of reports like that done by the justice department on the Ferguson police department that found rampant racism, despite a long and sordid history of racism against blacks in the U.S. Wyatt/bad anonymous asserts with no supporting evidence that police target blacks disproportionately because of something the blacks do to trigger police to disproportionately target them but he can't possibly conceive of what that would be.

But its impossible that it could be racism.

Really Wyatt, do you honestly think any sane person takes you seriously?

May 07, 2015 1:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

in addition to lazy and nasty, we should add: tiresome

the rise in global that occurred from the late 70s to late 90s has paused

even the leading global warming alarmists now concede this

they have their theories, but at least they don't deny facts, unlike Priya

the atmosphere is the temperature that matters

seas could rise without overall global warming for two reasons:

1. the billions of people on the Earth have increased pumping of deep aquifers underground, which winds up in the seas

2. unlike other areas, polar regions have experienced more warming, even though it not a global-wide phenomena

Let us know if you're confused about anything else, Priya!

May 07, 2015 2:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And let's not forget that even though Wyatt is a closeted promiscuous self-loathing gay hiding as an anti-gay conservative he totally disaproves of closeted anti-gay gays like Randy Boehning (R) who "infiltrate" conservative groups and "pretend" to be part of it as that shows a lack of character and we all know gays like Wyatt/bad anonymous have many inherent character flaws.

May 07, 2015 2:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Give it a rest Wyatt. You don't even believe your own B.S. you spew about global warming having "paused". Just tediously repeating the same lie won't make it true.

If global warming had stopped in 1998 the sea levels wouldn't have continued to rise since then and they most certainly wouldn't have continued to rise at an accelerating pace like they have.

May 07, 2015 2:07 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The highest estimates of sea level rise due to groundwater pumping are 25% of the current rise in sea level is due to the pumping of groundwater.

So, once again, if it had stopped warming in 1998 the sea level rise would be 1/4 of what it currently is and wouldn't be accelerating.

This is just another hail mary by Wyatt/bad anonymous along the lines of his claiming the sea level rise since 1998 is like a snowball in a warming room temperature room continuing to melt after the temperature of the room stopped rising - a snowball in a room melting over a 1 day period is not an accurate analogy of global ice caps and glaciers melting over 18 years of thawing and freezing seasons.

May 07, 2015 2:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And of course Wyatt likes to claim the planet cannot be overpopulated and that its impossible for a growing population to run out of resources. His own point shows that to be false. Groundwater is being pumped out 20 times as fast as the underground acquifers refill. Its not a matter of if humans are going to run out of fresh water, its a matter of when.

In an incredible display of ignorance as to what it takes to support human civilization Wyatt/bad anonymous thinks there won't be an overpopulation problem as long as there is physical space for more people on the planet,

May 07, 2015 2:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"there can be no racism in the Baltimore police department because the U.S. president, the U.S. attorney general, the baltimore mayor and baltimore police commissioner are black"

the police, black or white, aren't targeting the people mentioned above, nor are they doing it to the ever growing black middle and upper classes

and poor whites, "white trailer trash" get the same treatment as poor blacks

it comes down to economics

the stats endlessly cited are mainly due to the higher level of poverty among blacks, and the associated problems

add to that the way police are trained in this country to use excessive force when in doubt, which is something I agree must change

I understand that they are in a risky profession, and we owe them a debt

but this country is based on the notion that the rights of the individual are more important than the welfare of the masses

and I agree racism exists

it's just that the events in Baltimore are not indicative of a large race problem in America

overall, race relations are healthy

there are too many blacks in poverty but that will never change in a welfare state

we need to unleash private enterprise

"But then he contradicts himself and says black taxi drivers are racist and won't pick up young black men."

the anon you refer to actually said black taxi drivers won't pick up young black men IN CERTAIN AREAS

these areas are high crime

young males in these areas are more likely to be able to overpower a taxi driver than others in these areas

the point is that this is unfair to young black males who aren't dangerous but understandable and not necessarily racist, per se

"Despite the presence of reports like that done by the justice department on the Ferguson police department that found rampant racism,"

this is the Justice Department that doesn't even understand our constitution

you have to be skeptical with them, they're partisan

"do you honestly think any sane person takes you seriously?"

it's kind of irrelevant since the person you refer to seems to be the only sane person posting here

it's like Oliver Douglas with Mr Haney and Mr Kimball

May 07, 2015 2:36 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the atmosphere is the temperature that matters".

Sheer stupidity. Its the temperature of the entire climatic system that matters. With the seas warming at a far greater rate than the atmosphere eventually that ocean heat will be transferred to the atmosphere. Decades long ocean current cycles may delay it but not forever. There isn't a perfect insulating barrier between the oceans and the atmosphere.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "unlike other areas, polar regions have experienced more warming, even though it not a global-wide phenomena".

An out and out lie and you know it. The globe as a whole has experienced warming. I doubt you can even find many of your global warming deniers who wouldn't admit this. Certainly it is the overwhelming concensus of the scientific community based on mountains of evidence that the warming we have seen up until now is a GLOBAL, not local phenomenon.

The poles have warmed faster than the rest of the globe, but on average the rest of the globe minus the poles has warmed as well - no honest scientists (and not even many dishonest deniers) disputes this.

May 07, 2015 2:39 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "poor whites, "white trailer trash" get the same treatment as poor blacks".

Not true. When taking into account income blacks are still targeted far more frequently than whites.

And as far as "ever growing black middle and upper classes" go that's largely a myth. The median net worth for white households is $113,149, compared with $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks.

The idea that there is no significant racism in the U.S. is an absurd Republican talking point.

May 07, 2015 2:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the anon you refer to actually said black taxi drivers won't pick up young black men IN CERTAIN AREAS these areas are high crime young males in these areas are more likely to be able to overpower a taxi driver than others in these areas".

Its a sign of Wyatt/bad anonymous's faulty mind that he can't string two sentences together into a paragraph (brain damage).

Young white males are just as able to overpower a taxi driver in those areas as a young black male is - once again, even black people can discriminate against black people.

The Justice department report on the Ferguson police force found rampant racism - that's typical of the vast majority of police forces around the U.S.

The U.S. has a long and sordid history of violent racism against blacks, the idea that this has suddenly stopped because there is a black president is absurd.

When you see hoofprints, think horses, not Zebras. When you see disproportionate abuse of blacks think racism, not "blacks react to police in a way that makes the police more likely to pull them over".

May 07, 2015 2:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"If global warming had stopped in 1998 the sea levels wouldn't have continued to rise since then and they most certainly wouldn't have continued to rise at an accelerating pace like they have."

1. the billions of people on the Earth have increased pumping of deep aquifers underground, which winds up in the seas

2. unlike other areas, polar regions have experienced more warming, even though it not a global-wide phenomena

"Its not a matter of if humans are going to run out of fresh water, its a matter of when."

never happen

the planet is 75% water

certain countries have had great success with massive desalinization plants

given that water is vital to life, whatever it cost will be worth it

if the planet ever start warming up,government directed rationing and taxation won't be the answer

private enterprise and technological advances will be made, as in the past

as horrible as it probably seems to Priya, we can probably get by without turning into a regulated collective

May 07, 2015 3:02 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "unlike other areas, polar regions have experienced more warming, even though it not a global-wide phenomena".

An out and out lie and you know it. The globe as a whole has experienced warming. I doubt you can even find many of your global warming deniers who wouldn't admit this. Certainly it is the overwhelming concensus of the scientific community based on mountains of evidence that the warming we have seen up until now is a GLOBAL, not local phenomenon.

The poles have warmed faster than the rest of the globe, but on average the rest of the globe minus the poles has warmed as well - no honest scientists (and not even many dishonest deniers) disputes this.

I pointed out "Its not a matter of if humans are going to run out of fresh water, its a matter of when."

Wyatt/bad anonymous said never happen the planet is 75% water".

You really are dumber than a bag of hammers, aren't you? 99.9 percent of the planet is rock, the oceans and atmosphere are just an incredbily thin layer sitting on all that rock.

There is already a fresh water shortage Millions of people don't have access to sufficient fresh water. This is a problem that is already with us and as you can see from the groundwater depletion is something that's only going to get worse.

Wyatt is too dumb to comprehend that the earth's resources are finite and that means at some point (even though we might disagree about when) the earth cannot support more people. It is profoundly stupid and childish to suggest we'll "never" run out of fresh water. Technology won't save us from stupid behavior every time.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "certain countries have had great success with massive desalinization plants"

Fresh water can be extracted from sea water but its very expensive and energy intensive to do compared to tapping into fresh water sources. It creates a lot of salt waste which then becomes a disposal issue. Desalinization plants only account for .2% of all fresh water consumed.

Desalinization won't work to meet our water needs. We can't step up production of desalinization plants rapidly enough to prevent massive fresh water shortages and even if we eventually do it will be a severe economic cost that will lower the standard of living for the entire planet and the poor who won't be able to afford fresh water will be devastated. So, while you can argue that "whatever the cost it will be worth it to make freshwater out of seawater", those sky-high costs are going to be tragic for the 80% of humanity that lives on less than $10 per day.

This idea that the free market will solve everything is going to destroy the planet and result in untold human suffering.

The human population simply cannot continue growing indefinitely. There doesn't need to be any "regulated collectives" or government rationing and taxation (which there will be if we continue to deplete fresh water at our present rate), there just needs to be a social change where people stop indiscriminately having children and we reduce population growth to zero.

The Duggars "19 kids and counting" are the epitome of evil in today's society. Its time to globally shame couples that have more than 2 or 3 children.

May 07, 2015 3:29 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I pointed out "If global warming had stopped in 1998 the sea levels wouldn't have continued to rise since then and they most certainly wouldn't have continued to rise at an accelerating pace like they have."

Wyatt/bad anonymous tediously repeated his already debunked argument and said "the billions of people on the Earth have increased pumping of deep aquifers underground, which winds up in the seas".

As I pointed out the first time you said this, the highest estimates say 25% of sea level rise is due to groundwater pumping. Sea levels are 4 times higher than they would be if global warming had stopped in 1998. It is simply impossible for sea levels to be 4 times higher than groundwater pumping would have made them if the planet had not warmed since 1998.

Just accept reality for once Wyatt. This childish repetition of already debunked argumenst isn't scoring you any points. Stop being a troll.

Internet trolls like Wyatt/bad anonymous are sadists

May 07, 2015 3:44 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt says innocent gayness which harms no one and seeks to harm no one is a character flaw, but he's a sadist - that's a real character flaw.

May 07, 2015 3:49 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "unlike other areas, polar regions have experienced more warming, even though it not a global-wide phenomena".

Although such a claim would be laughed at by virtually all climatoligists, its doubly wrong for the following reason:

Most records of global atmospheric temperatures including one of the best known (kept by Britain’s Meteorological Office), do not include measurements from the Arctic, which has been warming faster than anywhere else in the world

When arctic satelite temperature readins are added in the rate of atmosperic warming since 1998 is 40-67% what it was in the 1990s. And le'ts not forget that 1998 was an unusually hot year because of an unusually strong El Nino which raises atmospheric temperatures.

Since 1998 there has been an increase in volcanic activity and pollution that causes heat to be reflected into space, the sun has been at a solar minimum, and a 20-30 cycle of ocean currents has caused most of the planets temperature increase to be stored in the oceans rather than the atmosphere.

Given all those natural cooling cycles normal climate should have seen a big drop in global temperatures since 1998 absent global warming but instead atmospheric temperatures have continued to increase and ocean temperatures have continued to increase to an even much greater degree. That just couldn't have happened if the planet stopped warming in 1998.

Global warming is real and it is man-made. Its going to cost a great deal more to adapt to global warming than it is to take steps to stop global warming. If you're afraid of onerous government interferrence in society that's what you're going to see if global warming is left unchecked.

May 07, 2015 6:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well done, Robert!

Michelle Basch
‏@mbaschWTOP


Fairfax Co. School Board approves updated nondiscrimination policy that includes gender identity. There was 1 no vote & 1 abstention @WTOP

May 07, 2015 10:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that's just wonderful, Robert

what's the latest Spring fashions?

May 08, 2015 5:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To the fashion maven who inquired about Spring fashions, I can assure you no one will have to wear long robes and pointy hoods over their heads to obscure their identity like those who have worked for decades to deny equal protections under the law to various minority groups.

And just like MCPS, no harm will come to a single student as a result of expanding nondiscrimination protections on the basis of gender identity.

May 08, 2015 8:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fairfax school board approves transgender protections

"The Fairfax County School Board voted to approve expanding protections to transgender students and staff Thursday night at a rambunctious meeting that included chants, jeers and vocal opposition from hundreds of parents.

The School Board voted 10 to 1 with one abstention to add “gender identity” to its non-discrimination policy, two months after Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) issued an opinion granting local school boards the authority to expand protections to transgender people.

The School Board voted in November to include sexual orientation in its non-discrimination policy after the Supreme Court let stand rulings that allow gay marriages in Virginia and other states.

“The decision by the Fairfax County School Board to add ‘gender identity’ to our nondiscrimination policy is to provide an environment which promotes equality where every student and employee is treated with dignity and respect,” board Chair Tammy Derenak Kaufax (Lee) said.

School Board members acknowledged that in the days before Thursday’s vote they had received thousands e-mails from parents and others in the community.

The auditorium at Luther Jackson Middle School was filled to capacity, with about 500 people in attendance. At times, the meeting was interrupted by vocal opposition from hundreds in the audience who chanted and booed.

Kaufax at one point hammered her gavel and threatened to clear the auditorium if audience members continued to interject. At least five Fairfax County police and school security officers were standing in the room during the meeting. Some in attendance stood to turn their backs on board members as they spoke in favor of the policy change.

School Board member Elizabeth Schultz, who voted against the measure, said the vote was about the privacy of the vast majority of students and staff in the school system.

“It is about the right of 99.7 percent of all students, all teachers and all employees to retain their right to privacy, safety and dignity,” said Schultz (Springfield). “Let’s change the policy to two words: ‘Don’t discriminate.’ ”

School Board member Patty Reed (Providence) noted that the vote to add gender identity to the policy seemed rushed.

Reed, who abstained from the vote, said that it took “10 years of study to institute later high school start times.”

Board member Ryan McElveen (At Large), who sponsored the motion to add protections for transgender students, described the effort as “the civil rights issue of our day.”

McElveen said that the updated policy would not immediately change bathroom or locker room rules and that transgender students and staff seeking accommodations would be dealt with on a case by case basis. Kaufax said in a statement that the school system planned to hire a consultant to address “developing appropriate regulations that protect the rights of all students and comply with state and federal law.”

McElveen said that “fear and distrust” had been sown into the community before Thursday’s vote, which he said was about showing “that we value all employees and students for who they are.”"

May 08, 2015 8:32 AM  
Anonymous my eyes on the prize said...

actually, by definition, all non-discrimination "protections" hurt people who are not part of the protected class because those not in the protected class are denied equal protection under the law

it's called logic

you might want to occasionally indulge in it

in certain cases, society has considered this necessary to allow some groups a basic standard of life

underage kids, however, would be better off presenting as their biological gender until they are old and mature enough to deal with such issues, and parents and schools should encourage this

"I can assure you no one will have to wear long robes and pointy hoods over their heads to obscure their identity like those who have worked for decades to deny equal protections under the law to various minority groups"

any time lunatic fringers try to establish an equivalence between racial identity and sexual deviance they further alienate minorities, who are the utmost adherents to millennia old traditions

might be part of why minorities are so strongly oppose the gay agenda

race is a physical characteristic

the inclination to sexual deviance is a character trait

it's called logic

you might want to occasionally indulge in it

MLK Jr: "I look forward to the day when my children will be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin"

the lunatics are still fighting against you, Martin

May 08, 2015 8:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"actually, by definition, all non-discrimination "protections" hurt people who are not part of the protected class because those not in the protected class are denied equal protection under the law

it's called logic"


No it isn't.

Every protected class of people covered in the law is treated equally. No one is permitted to discriminate against others on the basis of "age, race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, marital status, or disability," as stated in the now approved Fairfax County Public School policy:

"No student, employee, or applicant for employment in the Fairfax County Public Schools shall, on the basis of age, race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, marital status, or disability, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity, as required by law. It is the express intent of the School Board that every policy, practice, and procedure shall conform to all applicable requirements of federal and state law."

May 08, 2015 9:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

really?

try suing under discrimination laws if you're a 30 year old, Caucasian, white, male, straight, healthy, married Protestant whose ancestors are from England

the purpose is to protect certain classes and it's applied that way

if you're white and someone doesn't want to rent to you, they don't need to worry

if you're black and someone doesn't want to rent to you, they better damn well have a good excuse and document their reason

de facto, it results in unequal protection under the law

such a thing can be justified under certain extreme circumstances,

but such laws should be temporary

and there was a time not long ago where it was necessary to provide this help for African Americans, for example

they can take care of themselves now, just like everyone else

the hindrances on the pursuit of a normal life are no longer insurmountable for them

I mean, c'mon, the highest level officials in the land are black

ever wonder why we don't just have laws identifying reasons people can discriminate rather than reasons they can't?

maybe you can understand this all if you ponder that question

good luck, and don't give up trying to figure things out!!

May 08, 2015 10:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"try suing under discrimination laws if you're a 30 year old, Caucasian, white, male, straight, healthy, married Protestant whose ancestors are from England

the purpose is to protect certain classes and it's applied that way"


If this person can prove to a court he was discriminated against because of his

age
race/color
sex/gender
sexual orientation
health status
marital status
religion
or national origin

then he'd rightfully win his case in court. The law is designed to protect all classes that can prove discrimination.

"if you're white and someone doesn't want to rent to you, they don't need to worry

if you're black and someone doesn't want to rent to you, they better damn well have a good excuse and document their reason"


If the white denied renter can prove he was denied a place to rent because of his whiteness, he'd win that discrimination case in court.

If the black denied renter can prove he was denied a place to rent because of his blackness, he'd win that discrimination case in court.

That is precisely equal protection under the law.

Voting rights are being denied to mostly minority US citizens in many states and the protections from such discrimination as provided by the Voting Right Act are still needed in those states.

May 08, 2015 1:17 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous who can't string two sentences together into a paragraph because he's brain damaged said "the people in Sandtown can't catch a break because they're poor
it's not because they're black there are white areas in Appalachia that are almost identical"

You are so desperate and pathetic.

12% of Americans are black and 27% of them are below the poverty line. That means there are 11 million blacks in the U.S. living in poverty.

72% of Americans are white and 10% of them live below the poverty line. That means there are 25 million whites in the U.S. living in poverty.

There are more than twice as many poor whites in the U.S. as there are poor blacks. If the justice system was biased against people because they're poor rather than being racist we'd see more than twice as many whites in the justice system as blacks.

But that's not what we see. 40% of the prison population is white, 20% is Hispanic, and 40% is black. There are equal numbers of whites and blacks in prison (other races make up a negligable amount).

So, obviously the justice system doesn't disproportionately target people for being poor, it disproportionately targets them for being black.

To sum up, according to Wyatt/bad anonymous the police disproportionately target blacks because of some reaction blacks have when they see the police but he can't for the life of himself think of what that could be or what caused blacks to have this reaction that triggers police to stop them.

But it can't be racism, no sirree, that's impossible because despite a long and sordid history of racism in the U.S. it can't exist anymore because the president is black- forget that nearly half of americans didn't vote for him and most of those are racists to one degree or another.

Wyatt/bad anonymous won't entertain the idea that disproportionate targetting of blacks by police is caused by racism despite all the evidence pointing that way and no evidence pointing in any other direction because his political ideology requires him to deny racism exists regardless of the evidence he sees. He just ignores the overwhelming evidence of police racism and pretends there's some other magical reason he can't think of for police disproportionately targetting blacks.

May 08, 2015 1:40 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "if you're white and someone doesn't want to rent to you, they don't need to worry if you're black and someone doesn't want to rent to you, they better damn well have a good excuse and document their reason"

The standard deception of those trying to deny protection to certain groups in anti-discrimination laws. They do the same dishonesty with gays, falsely claiming adding sexual orientation to anti-discrimination laws gives special protections to gays when in reality it makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone because of their heterosexuality as well.

The anti-discrimination laws make it unlawful to refuse to rent to a person because they are white just as it makes it unlawful to refuse to rent to a person because they're black.

In desperation bigots like Wyatt/bad anonymous try to pretend anti-discrimination laws protect blacks and gays but not whites and heterosexuals. They know that's not true but lies are all they have.

May 08, 2015 1:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added 223,000 jobs in April, a solid gain that suggests that the economy may be recovering after stumbling at the start of the year.

The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate dipped to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent in March. That is the lowest rate since May 2008, six months into the Great Recession.

Yet the report included signs of sluggishness: March's weak job gain was revised sharply down to just 85,000 from 126,000. In the past three months, employers have added 191,000 positions, a decent gain but down from last year's average of 260,000.

Oil and gas drillers, which have struggled under the weight of lower energy prices, shed jobs for a fourth straight month.

But in an encouraging sign, construction companies, which include many higher-paying positions, added jobs at a healthy pace in April.

The job growth isn't yet boosting paychecks much. Average hourly wages rose just 3 cents in April to $24.87. Wages have risen 2.2 percent in the past 12 months, about the same modest year-over-year increase as in the past six years.

May 08, 2015 2:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate dipped to 5.4 percent"

what's the labor participation rate?

is it still lower than the Carter years?

people so discouraged they've given up are people too

May 08, 2015 3:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

62.8 exactly the same as the United Kingdom

May 08, 2015 5:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

that's common in socialist countries like Western Europe

but the comparison I had sought was the Carter years not another country

and we all know why you tried divert attention from that

May 09, 2015 12:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm sure Cameron and his absolute majority of Conservatives in Parliament will be glad to hear your view.

""Atlantic Hurricane Season May Start Early With Possible Coastal Threat to Carolinas"

when something "may" happen, that's not a story"


Well, now the storm has formed. Happy Mother's Day, Carolinas.

Surprising Ana becomes tropical storm menacing the Carolinas

"MIAMI (AP) -- Early surprise Ana muscled up to a tropical storm early Saturday as it plodded ever closer to the Carolinas, threatening to push dangerous surf and drenching rains against the Southeast coast as it made its appearance weeks ahead of the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Ana was centered at 5 a.m. EDT about 115 miles (190 kilometers) southeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and had top sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph), said Senior Hurricane Specialist Stacy Stewart at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The storm was moving north-northwest at 3 mph on a forecast track expected to bring it near the coasts of South and North Carolina sometime Sunday morning. A forecast advisory said it also was about 105 miles (170 kilometers) south-southeast of Cape Fear, North Carolina.

Stewart said dangerous surf and rip tides appear to be the biggest threat posed by the Atlantic season's first tropical storm though isolated flooding in some coastal areas is also a concern. Although the season doesn't formally start until June 1, he told The Associated Press such early surprise storms are not all that unusual every few years or so.

"We had a similar situation occur twice back in 2012 when we had two early season tropical storms, Alberto and Beryl," Stewart noted of two storms that also emerged in the month of May. "That was very unusual to get two storms before the normal start of the hurricane season; one is not that unusual.

But Ana marked the earliest subtropical or tropical storm to form in the Atlantic since another storm named Ana emerged in 2003, the Hurricane Center said in an earlier tweet. The Atlantic season officially runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, a period experts consider the most likely for tropical activity in the ocean basin...."


May 09, 2015 8:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Although the season doesn't formally start until June 1, he told The Associated Press such early surprise storms are not all that unusual every few years or so.

"We had a similar situation occur twice back in 2012 when we had two early season tropical storms, Alberto and Beryl," Stewart noted of two storms that also emerged in the month of May. "That was very unusual to get two storms before the normal start of the hurricane season; one is not that unusual."

note that 2012 continued as part of a remarkable stretch of calm in the Atlantic

no hurricanes have hit the Eastern seaboard since Florida had a couple in the same year as Katrina

it's the longest stretch of hurricane free seasons since weather records have been kept

count your blessings

we live in period of unusual climate stability

and the alarmists who predicted calamity back then are shoving themselves full of crow casserole

May 09, 2015 8:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

in 1973, a deeply flawed SCOTUS ruled there was a constitutional right to an abortion until viability is reached, which was then 28 weeks

last week, the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper establishing the new viability threshold of 22 weeks

meanwhile, liberals continue to push against science, fighting for a right to a ghastly abortion until the hour before birth

much like the science currently showing global warming has stopped in this millennium and homosexuality is not genetic, liberals only like science when it follows their predetermined agenda

but then it really isn't science

is it?

May 09, 2015 2:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"count your blessings

we live in period of unusual climate stability"


California is already counting its blessings for its very stable drought.

May 09, 2015 2:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

California has had regular droughts throughout its history

SCIENTISTS have stated that the current drought is part of California's regular cycle and NOT a result of global warming

I actually lived there in the seventies

Jerry Brown was governor and they were having a drought just like now

didn't rain the whole time I lived there

the biggest current problem is that environmentalist have fought constructing water retention facilities to match the growth in population

the last two years, it poured on the night of the Oscars and a baseball playoff was rained out in the fall

but it all watched into the ocean because of poor civil engineering, driven by anti-science liberals

other nations with naturally dry climates have built massive desalinization plants

Saudi Arabia has the biggest one on the world

Israel gets 40% of its water from desalinization

California could afford to build one if the plans for a bullet train from LA to SF were scrapped and used for this somewhat more important task

May 09, 2015 2:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I guess that shut TTF!!

May 10, 2015 8:35 AM  
Anonymous the shrinking Bill of Rights said...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/10/the_lefts_crusade_against_free_speech_126535.html

Kirsten Powers new book discusses and analyzes why liberals in America have some to oppose free speech, free press and freedom of religion. It began with leftists university professors who, as Marxists, believe dissent is dangerous and their cause so noble that all thought and speech contrary is to be stamped out by any means necessary.

So we then got the first President who actually never had a real job so never lost his campus mindset. In one of his first attacks on the Constitution, he barred FOX News reporters from press briefings because they weren't a "real news organization". When you have the government deciding what is real news, freedom of the press is gone. This wasn't the end of Obama's attacks on the press, of course. He went on to investigating and trying to indict reporters for leaking government secrets, espionage and anti-patriotism.

Now we have our next Dem standard bearer, Hillary, who has become the first major Presidential candidate in history to suggest amending the Bill of Rights. She wants free speech amended to make clear that political speech can be regulated by the government. Citizens United, remember, was about the government's attempt to use Federal election laws to ban a documentary critical of Hillary from airing on TV. The SCOTUS decided banning it would be banning speech. Hillary wants to make sure the Constitution's guarantee of free speech doesn't apply to speech critical of her. Just like laws against the Secretary of State taking bribes from foreign governments and deleting e-mail from government business that would prove this dpn't apply to her.

May 10, 2015 9:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the damage being done to minors by liberals pushing them to change gender:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-raging-battle-over-transgender-kids/article24333224/

May 10, 2015 5:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Documented damage is done by reparative therapy attempts to keep trans kids from expressing their true gender identity.

http://www.queerty.com/dr-kenneth-zuckers-war-on-transgenders-20090206

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Dreger/ASB%20paper/Zucker/Zucker%20subverts%20ASB.html

Maybe some can hide it for decades like American national hero and Olympic Decathlon Gold Medalist Bruce Jenner did.

May 11, 2015 7:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The religious conservative wing of the Republican party has made a concerted effort to attack trans rights this year but it is failing, particularly when it comes to anti-trans bills that would affect school children.

Last week the Democrat-controlled Minnesota Senate voted down a proposal that would have prevented trans students using showers and bathrooms that accord with their gender identity. The restriction was supposed to, as the Republican-led House and Senate supporters put it, help promote safety in locker rooms and showers but there haven’t been any reported problems over the existing rules being used to endanger or otherwise harm students. In essence, this was an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist and one that risked demonizing trans kids for no good reason.

The Senate rejected the measure 40-25 with three Republicans also voting the proposal down.

We previously brought you news that after an outcry from people like the Care2 community, Kentucky withdrew a similar amendment that had been proposed in the state Senate (unfortunately thereby tanking a much needed education reform bill to boot). That legislation had been widely protested as scaremongering and derisive, and something that many moderate conservatives said was unnecessary and harmful. The bill’s failure was celebrated by LGBT rights groups, and in terms of protecting trans rights the good news keeps coming.

Florida’s disgusting anti-trans bill that would have made trans people criminals for using the restroom or public accommodations matching their gender identity as opposed to their birth sex died last week, and with the legislative session over the bill cannot be revived, at least for now.

The legislation, known as HB 583 or the “Single-Sex Public Facilities,” would have led to trans people being given a first-degree misdemeanor charge, a $1,000 fine and/or up to one year in jail. As we previously discussed, the legislation was retaliation for a Miami-Dade County ordinance that sought to protect trans people from discrimination. This is a doubly important victory because the Florida legislation and the resulting backlash seemed to be the inspiration for other similar pieces of legislation cropping up in other states. As such, the bill failing may knock the confidence of other states like Texas which are currently flirting with similar bans.

Other victories that may have gone unnoticed in the busy first few months of the year include that California’s landmark law — which protects trans students and affirming their rights to access facilities, school programs and teams that accord with their gender identity — is safe for another year after an attempt to repeal the law failed to qualify for the ballot, and, with each passing year since it was enshrined in 2014, that legislation looks increasingly more likely to be sticking around for good.

To be sure, it hasn’t been all good news so far this year. An attempt to reform the ID change process for trans people in Colorado was killed by Republicans in the state legislature, and efforts in other states to enshrine discrimination still persist, sometimes specifically targeting trans people and sometimes in the form of religious privilege bills.

However, the failure of the bills that would have enshrined anti-trans discrimination shows that, while there is a long way to go for achieving equality for trans people, if the ultra conservative wing of the Republican party thought that it could easily translate its anti-gay animus to an anti-trans cause it most certainly is failing in that effort. It also shows however that even as our focus falls on marriage equality as that issue goes before the Supreme Court, we have to also keep the pressure on to ensure that any victory there does not come at the expense of pushing for and protecting trans rights.

http://www.care2.com/causes/it-seems-the-gops-anti-trans-scaremongering-is-a-big-failure.html#ixzz3ZpbjJ0IY

May 11, 2015 10:19 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

One of my colleagues who covered the Fairfax School Board meeting with his students said the kids expressed shock that people would so angry about this, of all things.

rrjr

May 12, 2015 11:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

you explain what happens when people use hype and propaganda

the gay agenda types have no discretion or civility

views held not long ago by virtually everyone in our society, including the President, are now characterized as evil of the first order, and no other view can be tolerated in society

you made the situation what it is

explain it to the kids

May 12, 2015 12:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shame on parents fighting against transgender kids in school bathrooms

"Using the bathroom? Really? That’s what this is going to come down to?

Because that’s the obsession of just about anyone who is still vexed by the idea that transgender Americans should be protected from discrimination: the restroom thing.

It’s the first thing folks ask me when they want to know how Tyler — who was born a girl but enrolled in kindergarten at my son’s school as a boy three years ago — is doing.

“But where does he go to the bathroom?”

Answer: He uses the boys’ bathroom, just like all the other boys at school. And not once in three years of boy toilet use has anything happened surrounding Tyler, now 8, that is more unseemly than the usual stuff boys do in school bathrooms.


Yet that was the main point from hundreds of parents who whooped, whistled, hollered and thunderously applauded at a Fairfax County School Board meeting last week when speakers raged against a change in school anti-discrimination policy to include “gender identity.”

One mother, Jun Yuan, said that her 7-year-old daughter is so shy, she locks the bathroom door and doesn’t even want her mom to see her pee.

Amen. I don’t want anyone to see me pee, either. (Although everyone who got a card or flowers on Sunday for Mother’s Day knows that’s not really possible as a mother.)

Yuan is terrified of what will happen when a child who looks different under her dress locks herself in a stall and privately relieves herself.

The horror!

“It will increase sex crimes to little children as young as 5 years old,” Yuan told the School Board as the audience roared with approval. “Stop this proposal. Do not hurt our children,” she said, generating more whistles than a call for a Prince encore.

For shame, parents. I hope that any child wrestling with gender identity never, ever sees that School Board video of adults behaving so badly.

The bathroom can be a terrifying place for most transgender people, and it’s heartbreaking to see parents use fear-mongering and a right to privacy as the way to further hurt one of America’s frequently abused populations.

What about locker rooms? Usually, there are stalls. And they’re almost always full and fought over by kids who also want privacy from changing in front of their cruel, same-sex peers. You don’t think that exists? Think back a minute to the training-bra and peach-fuzz days.

Add a few more partitions, the gender-conforming kids will be delighted, trust me...."

May 12, 2015 1:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Continued

"...The other thing parents seemed to be frightened of is an alleged lack of control over “sex and sexuality” education for their children.

Casey Mattox, a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom, testified at the School Board meeting Thursday that he was pleased that he could opt his 9-year-old daughter out of the sex education class her peers took. (Good luck with that, because kids totally don’t talk to one another. And I’m certain that no one is passing Judy Blume books around.)

Mattox said that with the inclusion of “gender identity” in the school policy, his control over his daughter’s education on sex would be eliminated.

Um, Mr. Mattox? Gender identity is not about sexuality. It is about whether a person feels they are male or female, despite the below-the-belt organs they were born with.

The official name is gender dysphoria, and after 14 years of study and revision, it appears in the newest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. That’s the bible of mental medicine that includes definitions of better-known things, such as PTSD, gambling addiction, anorexia nervosa, insomnia and bipolar disorder.

And you know what’s funny? Of all the complex and difficult ways to tackle some of the other conditions in the psychiatric association’s manual, this one is usually pretty simple. The cure? Usually all it takes is allowing that person to live with the gender they identify with.

America is watching a painful and public transition as Olympian Bruce Jenner rebirths as the person who’s been struggling for decades to emerge. Imagine the pain a child with the same condition is in and how parents could help ease it."

May 12, 2015 1:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

there's actually no reason bathrooms can't be segregated by biological sex

further, boys who "feel like girls" should be advise to present as their biological gender until they are old enough to make a mature decision

the other way around, btw, is usually no problem

girls can generally wear whatever they want and it's considered nothing more than a fashion statement

shame on lunatic fringe gay advocates who exploit confused kids for their own political gain, without any concern for their welfare

May 12, 2015 1:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The only ones screaming about political gain were the parents who hate trans kids so much they want to prevent them from "The cure...Usually all it takes is allowing that person to live with the gender they identify with."

May 12, 2015 2:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maryland tops the 2015 U.S. News and World Report annual education rankings as the state with the most high-performing high schools.

The state wins the coveted education bragging rights, with 28.9 percent of its eligible schools earning gold and silver medals. According to the publication, those schools are most successfully preparing students for college, based on students participating in and achieving passing scores on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests. Students must also do well on statewide tests.

California came in second in the publications’ rankings with 27.2 percent of its high schools earning gold or silver medals. Connecticut was third with 25.4 percent.

Seven of Maryland’s top high schools are in Montgomery County, with Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda leading the way. Eleven MCPS high schools received a gold medal for being among the top 500 schools in the nation and three received a silver medal for being among the top 2,527, the school system said.

This is the second national ranking to be released in the past month that shows that MCPS high schools are among the best in the nation, according to a news release. In April, The Washington Post released a report on America’s Most Challenging High Schools, and all 25 MCPS high schools made the list, placing six in the top 200.

May 12, 2015 2:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The only ones screaming about political gain were the parents who hate trans kids so much they want to prevent them from "The cure...Usually all it takes is allowing that person to live with the gender they identify with.""

they're too young to make that decision, you freakin' idiot, even if that serves to advance your pathetic agenda

I posted an article just like week with esteemed psychologists concerned that liberals are pushing kids into this without careful consideration of the facts, and with ill effects on the children caught in the political crossfire

shame on the liberal lunatics

May 12, 2015 3:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My agenda is:

LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Your agenda seems to be to bully some folks with insults and name calling.















May 12, 2015 4:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL"

liberty?

you don't agree with freedom of conscience, speech, press, religion, or association

and you favor endless regulations to try to compensate for those who want to defy convention and then force everyone else to favor them

justice?

forget equal protection under the law

you want certain groups to have special protection as a protected class

if people act strange or weird, they have made their choice and will likely pay social consequences

it isn't limited to the sexual stuff either

it isn't the proper role of the government guarantee social success

equal protection is all anyone deserves

"Your agenda seems to be to bully some folks with insults and name calling"

you might want to pay attention

I'm greatly outnumbered here and regularly insulted and call names

it's fine, it's just you shouldn't complain when it comes back at you

a society where no one is ever offended has neither liberty or justice

show a little dignity and stop trying to cope by making everyone feel sorry for you


May 12, 2015 10:24 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I am proud to be a stakeholder in Fairfax County Public Schools.

rrjr

May 13, 2015 6:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I'm greatly outnumbered here and regularly insulted and call names"

Heed your own advice:

"show a little dignity and stop trying to cope by making everyone feel sorry for you"

And here, maybe you should move to Wyoming where you'll fit right in because they are forcing all citizens to bury their heads in the sand rather than to see, document, and report environmental problems going on around them.

"Wyoming is so sick of meddling, do-good environmentalists trying to report public safety hazards to government agencies that they’ve had to take extreme measures. From now on, legislators have decided, it is illegal for citizens to collect evidence – including taking photos – of potential environmental infractions, reports Slate.

It’s a daft response to a larger problem, obviously. Rather than addressing the many environmental issues that arise, Wyoming has decided to effectively gag the people who try to bring attention to these eco-harms. Go figure that the state is willing to ignore companies that are carelessly putting citizens at risk while criminalizing those who want to increase public safety.

While the law can probably be attributed to a variety of factors, the most influential one is undoubtedly the cattle industry. Wyoming has a problem with cows excessively pooping in waterways, which contaminates the water with dangerous E. coli. Farmers are supposed to take responsibility for their cattle and ensure they aren’t spending much time by streams and the like, but more often than not, they just let the cattle roam unobstructed and the potentially fatal bacteria winds up in the public water supply anyway.

Because the cattle industry is so prominent in Wyoming, politicians apparently have decided to do them a solid by making it hard to prove any wrongdoing. Now it’s illegal for citizens to take water samples to hand over to government agencies or even photos of potential infractions for that matter. It’s not just an issue of trespassing on private property to collect data either. Ridiculously, it is illegal for citizens to document environmental hazards on public land, too!

The punishments are also ridiculous. Normally, a cattle farmer who lets his animals defecate in a public waterway might get a slap on the wrist, but now a citizen who tries to show proof that such a thing is occurring will face a maximum of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. That fine is increased to $5,000 for subsequent offences.

The law even makes sure that selfless activists who are willing to suffer the consequences for the greater public good won’t win. While a private citizen’s photos and water samples can be used as evidence to show that he or she broke this particular bogus law, it is automatically inadmissible in a case against the actual polluters. Yeah, that seems real fair…

With any luck, the law will be contested in court and eventually squashed. After all, the legislation flies in the face of the Clean Water Act. The federal decree actually encourages everyday Americans to participate in the process of holding polluters accountable by collecting samples. Wyoming’s “stay out of it!” approach not only does the opposite, it likely obstructs citizens’ First Amendment rights to document and discuss the environmental issues they encounter.

We often hear the phrase “If you see something, say something” from our own government. Clearly, the government would prefer this remain a fear tactic rather than something used to hold private interests accountable. Cow poop might not be “terrorism,” but an E. coli outbreak could be just as much a threat to the people of Wyoming, so why should telling the government about a potential hazard be deemed a crime?

http://www.care2.com/causes/wyoming-makes-it-illegal-to-report-environmental-health-problems.html#ixzz3a1R0g433"

May 13, 2015 8:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

""I'm greatly outnumbered here and regularly insulted and call names"

Heed your own advice:

"show a little dignity and stop trying to cope by making everyone feel sorry for you""

fascinating

I wasn't trying to make you feel sorry for me at all, as I clearly stated

my only point is that the accusation of being a bully is preposterous

a bully would need some inherent advantage to exploit

other than my superior intelligence, and the fact that my positions are obviously correct, I have none

May 13, 2015 10:09 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "my only point is that the accusation of being a bully is preposterous a bully would need some inherent advantage to exploit".

Nonsense. To be a bully you merely need to attack the innocent. You've devoted your life to doing that, you are the essence of a bully. Just like the schoolyard bully relies on superior strength and size to treat others unfairly you hide behind the anonymity of the internet to avoid being held accountable for your lies - that's your "advantage to exploit"

If the positions Wyatt takes were correct he wouldn't be the chronic liar he is. This is someone who admits when he finds a news story whose position he doesn't like he feels its his right to change it to say the opposite of what it originally said without any proof the position it took was wrong or his contradictory assertion is correct.

On Planet Wyattnuttia, if he can imagine it to be true, it automatically is true. If his mouth is flapping that's the only evidence he needs to believe what he's saying is true.

Research shows internet trolls like Wyatt/bad anonymous are sadists

May 13, 2015 2:34 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Innocent LGBT people need to post anonymously on the internet to avoid unjust discrimination.

I post with my real name because I want people to know I stand behind my comments and I'm not afraid to take responsibility for them because I take every step I can to make sure I speak the truth.

People like Wyatt/bad anonymous who claim to not be gay/bisexual post anonymously because they are dishonest people at heart. They don't stand behind what they say, they're ashamed of their dishonesty and bullying and they don't want to take responsibility for their words.

May 13, 2015 2:49 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Anti-gay evangelicals are driving Americans away from Christianity

In 2007, more than 78 percent of Americans said they practiced some form of Christianity. Today, in apparently the lowest figure in US history, 70.6 percent identify as Christians, according to a new Pew study.

Religion and politics are two subjects fraught within the welter of American expressions of faith, and the interplay between them could be evolving/ Whereas religion has often influenced politics, now politics appears to be driving some Americans away from religion.

That phenomenon is an important factor in the declining number of Americans who practice the Christian faith, as well as the rising number of those without any faith at all. The Pew survey found that those unaffiliated with a faith tradition are now the second-largest religious demographic group after Evangelicals, with about 23 percent of the population. Among these, atheists and agnostics have jumped from 4 percent of the population in 2007 to more than 7 percent of the population in 2014, and most have more liberal political views.

“Traditionally, we thought religion was the mover and politics were the consequence," Michael Hout, a sociologist and demographer at New York University, told the Religion News Service. The opposite appears the case today, he said, as some have left evangelical denominations and the Catholic faith because “they saw them align with a conservative political agenda and they don't want to be identified with that.” Last year, Mr. Hout cowrote the paper “Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012,” which studied the trend.

May 13, 2015 5:42 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

At the same time, changing demographics – especially the growing influence of Millennials – have produced simmering changes within the evangelical subculture itself, which is still characterized by an emphasis on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

In 2007, about 14 percent of Evangelicals expressed support for gay marriage – the lowest percentage in the country by far. By 2014, however, 21 percent expressed support, fueled by the younger generation, another Pew survey found.

“I know many, many cases of younger Millennial Evangelicals who just are turned off by the conservative politics,” says Professor Gushee, whose 2014 book, “Changing Our Mind,” offers a defense of same-sex marriage from an evangelical perspective. “Sometimes they leave an evangelical identity, and sometimes they leave a Christian identity altogether because they’re sick of the whole thing.”

May 13, 2015 5:42 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

May 13, 2015 5:43 PM  
Anonymous bull in a china shop said...

"Nonsense"

hmmm...quite a statement

let's see if holds up

"To be a bully you merely need to attack the innocent"

I'm afraid Misters Merriam and Webster disagree with you

a bully is one who uses threatening and angry speech to be cruel to those who are weaker

the anon you refer to has not done this

"You've devoted your life to doing that, you are the essence of a bully"

sounds like you've known anon all his or her life

how many times have you met him or her?

say, you're not making this up, are you?

"Just like the schoolyard bully relies on superior strength and size to treat others unfairly you hide behind the anonymity of the internet to avoid being held accountable for your lies - that's your "advantage to exploit""

hardly an advantage

everyone here is free to remain anonymous

and, actually, you could post anonymously any time you wanted to

if it's such a strength, go ahead and make an anonymous post

this blog is designed to accept anonymous posts

if you don't like it, there are many blogs out there which require posters to identify

and, if you think something is a lie, feel free to state why

"If the positions anon takes were correct he wouldn't be the chronic liar he is"

can "positions" be lies?

"This is someone who admits when he finds a news story whose position he doesn't like he feels its his right to change it to say the opposite of what it originally said without any proof the position it took was wrong or his contradictory assertion is correct"

you're getting yourself all worked up

maybe you should take your meds

"if he can imagine it to be true, it automatically is true"

I'm surprised you would make such a statement

aren't you someone who claims to be a female, regardless of any evidence, just because you feel like one?

so whatever gender you "imagine to be true, automatically is true"?

what's the difference?

"If his mouth is flapping that's the only evidence he needs to believe what he's saying is true"

technically, this blog is written and not oral

"Research shows internet trolls like anonymous are sadists"

really?

doesn't research show that most people who say they are transgender women are actually

of that's right: you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows

"Innocent LGBT people need to post anonymously on the internet to avoid unjust discrimination"

if such people want to keep it to themselves, I have no objection

but, there is little, if any, discrimination against innocent LGBTs these days

even the guilty ones aren't discriminated against

"I post with my real name because I want people to know I stand behind my comments and I'm not afraid to take responsibility for them because I take every step I can to make sure I speak the truth"

exhibitionism is a characteristic of LGBTs

they enjoy drawing attention to themselves

it's not a virtue

the real reason you want to drag personal attacks into your arguments is because your arguments are so thin

"People like anonymous who claim to not be gay/bisexual post anonymously because they are dishonest people at heart"

it's interesting that you want everyone to believe you are female just because you say so but you don't think you should accept what everyone else says about their preferences

of course, I don't recall the anon you refer to ever saying whether he or she was gay, straight, bi or asexual

he or she appears to be wise not to let himself or herself be defined

"on't stand behind what they say, they're ashamed of their dishonesty and bullying and they don't want to take responsibility for their words"

I've got an idea: fight words with words

I know that goes against your bullying instincts but give it a try

May 13, 2015 9:56 PM  
Anonymous some Napoleon said...

"In 2007, more than 78 percent of Americans said they practiced some form of Christianity. Today, in apparently the lowest figure in US history, 70.6 percent identify as Christians, according to a new Pew study"

"The Pew survey found that those unaffiliated with a faith tradition are now the second-largest religious demographic group"

surprised it's not higher

influenced by Reformed Christianity from the beginning, independent thought has always been strong

but such thought rarely deduces atheism, making this category basically a dubious miscellaneous distinction

"some have left evangelical denominations and the Catholic faith because “they saw them align with a conservative political agenda and they don't want to be identified with that.”"

you can make virtually any statement you want if you preface with "some"

"“I know many, many cases of younger Millennial Evangelicals who just are turned off by the conservative politics,” says Professor Gushee,"

again, how "many, many"? you could make this statement about anything in a land with over 300 million

btw, "Professor Gushee" sounds suspicious

did you get these quotes from an article in the Onion?

“Sometimes they leave an evangelical identity, and sometimes they leave a Christian identity altogether because they’re sick of the whole thing.”

sometimes, huh?

actually, not much

if you read the Pew study, you will find that Catholics and mainstream Protestants, the churches most gay-friendly, have each dropped seven full points

meanwhile, evangelicals are down a point but mainly from changing demographics and immigration

evangelicals have the highest replacement rate: for every one person who drops out of evangelicalism, 1.6 converts

makes the evangelical future seem pretty rosy

you are right about one thing though: increasing numbers of evangelicals accept some parts of the gay agenda

but, contrary to stereotype, evangelicalism has more diversity of thought than any other religious category, including atheism

""Blogger Priya Lynn said...
"The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!""

Priya has plagiarized the above statement

it's from a song by Napoleon XIV called "They're coming to take me away, haha"

you can hear it on youtube

people in nut houses love that song

May 13, 2015 10:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

""The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!""

Priya has plagiarized the above statement

it's from a song by Napoleon XIV called "They're coming to take me away, haha"

you can hear it on youtube

people in nut houses love that song"


Yet another sorry personal attack.

Apparently you know that song quite well.

You can even cite the obscure one-hit wonder band from 1960's that recorded and released it.

Groovy!

Except there's no lyric that says "The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tell ya!"

And the "ho ho" and "hee hee" lyrics seem to be missing.

Bummer!

NAPOLEON XIV
"They're Coming To Take Me Away"


"Remember when you ran away
And I got on my knees
And begged you not to leave
Because I'd go beserk

Well you left me anyhow
And then the days got worse and worse
And now you see I've gone
Completely out of my mind

And they're coming to take me away ha-haaa
They're coming to take me away ho ho hee hee ha haaa
To the funny farm
Where life is beautiful all the time
And I'll be happy to see those nice young men
In their clean white coats
And they're coming to take me away ha haaa

You thought it was a joke
And so you laughed
You laughed when I said
That losing you would make me flip my lid

Right? You know you laughed
I heard you laugh. You laughed
You laughed and laughed and then you left
But now you know I'm utterly mad

And they're coming to take me away ha haaa
They're coming to take me away ho ho hee hee ha haaa
To the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds
And basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes
And they're coming to take me away ha haaa

I cooked your food
I cleaned your house
And this is how you pay me back
For all my kind unselfish, loving deeds
Ha! Well you just wait
They'll find you yet and when they do
They'll put you in the A.S.P.C.A.
You mangy mutt

And they're coming to take me away ha haaa
They're coming to take me away ha haaa ho ho hee hee
To the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time
And I'll be happy to see those nice young men
In their clean white coats
And they're coming to take me away
To the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds
And basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes

And they're coming to take me away ha haaa!"

May 14, 2015 11:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the first step out of lunacy is to learn to laugh at yourself

try it, and see if it helps

May 14, 2015 12:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And where did you earn your medical degree?

I hope you have good malpractice insurance!

May 14, 2015 12:40 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Taxpayers Subsidize World’s Most Profitable Corporations

A few years ago, ExxonMobil broke the world record for profit, making more than $40 billion in a single year. Since then, they’ve come close to breaking their own record more than once. The Guardian reports on the many ways that taxpayers in this country and around the world massively subsidize those profits.

The world’s biggest and most profitable fossil fuel companies are receiving huge and rising subsidies from US taxpayers, a practice slammed as absurd by a presidential candidate given the threat of climate change.

A Guardian investigation of three specific projects, run by Shell, ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum, has revealed that the subsidises were all granted by politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.

The Guardian has found that:

⦁ A proposed Shell petrochemical refinery in Pennsylvania is in line for $1.6bn (£1bn) in state subsidy, according to a deal struck in 2012 when the company made an annual profit of $26.8bn.

⦁ ExxonMobil’s upgrades to its Baton Rouge refinery in Louisiana are benefitting from $119m of state subsidy, with the support starting in 2011, when the company made a $41bn profit.

⦁ A jobs subsidy scheme worth $78m to Marathon Petroleum in Ohio began in 2011, when the company made $2.4bn in profit.

May 14, 2015 1:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

But that’s just three projects. Overall, the numbers are staggering:

Sanders, with representative Keith Ellison, recently proposed an End Polluter Welfare Act, which they say would cut $135bn of US subsidies for fossil fuel companies over the next decade. “Between 2010 and 2014, the oil, coal, gas, utility, and natural resource extraction industries spent $1.8bn on lobbying, much of it in defence of these giveaways,” according to Sanders and Ellison.

In April, the president of the World Bank called for the subsidies to be scrapped immediately as poorer nations were feeling “the boot of climate change on their neck”. Globally in 2013, the most recent figures available,the coal, oil and gas industries benefited from subsidies of $550bn, four times those given to renewable energy.

You want welfare? There it is. Corporate welfare. A massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the world’s richest corporations who are already making higher profits than any companies in history. Add to that the massive cost of dealing with the effects of burning those fossil fuels in terms of healthcare, lost worktime and productivity, pollution abatement and cleanup and much more. And of course Republicans focus on demonizing poor people to distract attention from the real welfare queens.

May 14, 2015 1:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous whose warped brain can't string two sentences together to make a paragraph said "if you read the Pew study, you will find that Catholics and mainstream Protestants, the churches most gay-friendly, have each dropped seven full points meanwhile, evangelicals are down a point but mainly from changing demographics and immigration evangelicals have the highest replacement rate: for every one person who drops out of evangelicalism, 1.6 converts makes the evangelical future seem pretty rosy".

LOL, that'd matter if the christians leaving gay friendly churches were turning anti-gay when they left, but they're staying gay friendly and they're leaving christianity because loud anti-gay evangenlicals are turning them off from religion. Further bad news for your side is that even the evangelicals are becoming less anti-gay with time.

A full 7% more evangelicals support gay marriage than did in 2007, even amongst the most anti-gay group in the U.S. the old bigots are dying off and being rapidly replaced with an accepting younger generation.

Face it, as the years go by you're going to be increasingly marginalized as an anti-gay bigot - you may as well stop trying to suppress your same sex attractions now and come out of the closet. Research shows gays and bisexuals who positively accept their sexual orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not. Stop sacrificing your happiness Wyatt in order to please the bigots you identify with.

May 14, 2015 3:47 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The percentage of christians in the U.S. has dropped from 78% in 2007 to 70% today.

Anyway you slice it christianity and anti-gayness is dying out in the States at a rapid pace.

May 14, 2015 3:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

It Only Took Four Months For China To Achieve A Jaw-Dropping Reduction In Carbon Emissions

Contrary to right wing lies, it will not be onerous to reduce carbon emmissions, it will be dramatically cheaper than adapting to a world warmed by excessive carbon emissions.

May 15, 2015 5:57 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

FoxNews coverage on the latest in Fairfax, a Family Life Education curriculum recommendations that actually tells students LGBT people are normal. Local voices are being drowned out by national efforts:

Fox News of Fairfax sex-ed

Peter Sprigg is back!

May 15, 2015 8:12 PM  
Anonymous Oops said...

Fox News on Fairfax sex-ed

May 15, 2015 8:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

first brilliant anon counsels TTFers:

"the first step out of lunacy is to learn to laugh at yourself

try it, and see if it helps"

to which, pathetic anon replies:

"And where did you earn your medical degree?

I hope you have good malpractice insurance!"

some people take themselves so seriously

it's the first step to the nut house

May 17, 2015 9:43 AM  
Anonymous brilliant said...

"A few years ago, ExxonMobil broke the world record for profit, making more than $40 billion in a single year"

and the U.S. government really made out

Exxon is a publicly traded company

when they paid out those profits in dividends, the people who paid the tax were largely in the highest bracket

indeed, those people are even paying an extra little tax to subsidize Obamacare for lower income citizens

not all of it was taxed immediately, however

the tax was deferred for owners like janitors and school teachers who have their holdings socked away in retirement accounts

does the quack socialist from Vermont favor taxing the retirement savings of janitors and school teachers?

is that what it wants to end?

May 17, 2015 9:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gallup: Record-High 60% of Americans Support Same-Sex Marriage

"....Implications

National support for marriage equality has been fairly steady in its upward climb, and is more than double what it was in 1996 when Gallup first polled on the issue. A clear majority of Americans now support the issue. The increase among Americans -- an increase seen in all major political parties -- comes in the midst of a string of legal victories ruling in favor of same-sex couples seeking to be treated equally under the law.

The Supreme Court may issue the final word on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage next month, although it's certainly possible that it may issue a narrow ruling on technical aspects of same-sex marriage law rather than say it should be legal in all states. With the ideological make-up of the court, it could decide that same-sex marriage is not a constitutionally supported right -- though this is a less likely outcome, and would go against prevailing public opinion.

While there has been uneven growth in support among Republicans versus Democrats, both groups have become more supportive. The remaining broad partisan divide, however, underscores how contentious the issue will continue to be as the 2016 election process unfolds.

As Hillary Clinton seeks the Democratic nomination in 2016, her support for gay marriage may be even more important as her party embraces the platform more closely than it has in the past. Clinton, like President Barack Obama, changed her stance in 2013 upon her exit from the State Department.

So far, none of the Republicans who have announced their 2016 candidacy support gay marriage, and neither have any potential candidates who are expected to officially throw their hats in the ring. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is widely viewed as a top 2016 contender, recently doubled down on his stance against gay marriage -- a move consistent with the opinions of rank-and-file Republicans who, despite showing increased support for gay marriage, still oppose it outright. While an anti-same-sex marriage position should not present a challenge for GOP candidates in the primary, it could be more challenging in a general election setting given majority support among all Americans. At the same time, same-sex marriage, like many other moral issues, tends to rank well behind issues such as the economy, terrorism and education when Americans name the issues that are most likely to influence their vote..."

May 20, 2015 12:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"National support for marriage equality has been fairly steady in its upward climb, and is more than double what it was in 1996 when Gallup first polled on the issue. A clear majority of Americans now support the issue. The increase among Americans -- an increase seen in all major political parties -- comes in the midst of a string of legal victories ruling in favor of same-sex couples seeking to be treated equally under the law."

there is no indication these numbers believe gay "marriage" is a constitutional right

"The Supreme Court may issue the final word on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage next month. With the ideological make-up of the court, it could decide that same-sex marriage is not a constitutionally supported right -- though this is a less likely outcome, and would go against prevailing public opinion."

the Constitution is beyond majority caprice

"While there has been uneven growth in support among Republicans versus Democrats, both groups have become more supportive. The remaining broad partisan divide, however, underscores how contentious the issue will continue to be as the 2016 election process unfolds."

if the Dems try it, they won't get much traction

"As Hillary Clinton seeks the Democratic nomination in 2016, her support for gay marriage may be even more important as her party embraces the platform more closely than it has in the past. Clinton, like President Barack Obama, changed her stance in 2013 upon her exit from the State Department."

how can she be considered for the Presidency after being instinctually bigoted for so many years?

"While an anti-same-sex marriage position should not present a challenge for GOP candidates in the primary, it could be more challenging in a general election setting given majority support among all Americans."

probably not

"At the same time, same-sex marriage, like many other moral issues, tends to rank well behind issues such as the economy, terrorism and education when Americans name the issues that are most likely to influence their vote..."

indeed, only 25% of voters say the will vote based on this issue and the majority of those are against gay marriage

it would seem supporting is more dangerous than opposing gay "marriage"

Repubs can continue to support the family and the constitution with impunity

May 20, 2015 6:49 PM  
Anonymous AAA said...

"there is no indication these numbers believe gay "marriage" is a constitutional right"

There's a simple reason for that. Marriage isn't a constitutional right for anyone. It's just not in the constitution at all. Try reading it sometime, and maybe you won't look so stupid when you keep refering to it.

The issue at hand is the 14th amendment. The WSJ has a pretty concise explanation of the crux of the problem:

"The same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court pose one of the most direct constitutional questions to arrive in years: Does the 14th Amendment, which guarantees “equal protection” and “due process” of law, forbid states from treating gay couples differently than heterosexual ones?

To date, four federal appeals courts have said making such a distinction is prohibited; one reached the opposite conclusion. The outcome hinges on how the justices apply the 14th Amendment—by many measures, the most transformative provision of the Constitution after the Bill of Rights.

“It’s clear that the 14th Amendment adopts a broader principle than what might have been the static conditions of 1868,” said Calvin Massey, a law professor at the University of New Hampshire. But in considering equal-protection cases, he said, the question is, “equal in relation to what?”

Many laws treat people differently based on their characteristics. For instance, people under 16 may be compelled to attend school, women might be required to wear tops at the beach while men aren’t required to do so and people with disabilities can receive special accommodations for automobile parking while others do not. Typically, disparate treatment based on such differences will pass constitutional muster if a court finds it “rational.”

Most federal judges have found gay-marriage bans fail that test, deciding they harm a particular group of people without advancing any legitimate state interest.

At the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, lawyers for Indiana and Wisconsin argued that restricting marriage to heterosexuals is justified because it benefits children by increasing the likelihood offspring from unplanned pregnancies are cared for by parents who are legally bound to one another. To counteract a parent’s impulse to flee responsibilities, marriage helps bind people together with incentives, such as tax and inheritance benefits, and burdens, such as the legal obstacles of divorce, the states said.

That argument “is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in a September appeals court opinion. He said heterosexual couples that are infertile or choose against having children are permitted to marry, yet gay couples seeking to raise children are denied social legitimacy and economic benefits that would make the task of raising a family easier.

He summarized Indiana’s rationale thus: “Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure.”

In the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Judge Jeffrey Sutton found similar state arguments persuasive."

4 federal appeals courts decided that the 14th amendment protects the rights of gay people to get married, and the Supreme court refused to hear those cases, letting their decisions stand. It was only when 1 court decided against it that SCOTUS decided they needed to step in.

The SCOTUS has been avoiding having to take sides on this issue as long as they can. Now that they have the cover of a 60% approval rating for gay marriage, they can safely "lead from behind." Except for Ginsberg of course - she has already performed at least 2 gay weddings that I know of already - by the power invested in her by the Constition of the United States.

May 22, 2015 1:15 AM  
Anonymous http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/risk-of-new-global-warming-plateau-rising-with-el-nino-2015/51382/ said...

Thursday, May 21, 2015, 12:20 PM - With new records being set for global heat and El Niño growing stronger, 2015 may represent a new "step up" in the continued rise in global temperatures. Here's why...

Even as experts declared an El Niño earlier this year, 2014 had already topped the list of hottest years (without El Niño's help), and 2015 was already setting global heat records.

So far, with only the weak El Niño Modoki declared as of March:

Dec 2014 to Feb 2015 has come in as the warmest winter on record,
January, February and March 2015 were all the warmest of their respective months on record,
The period of Jan-March 2015 took the top spot as the warmest first quarter on record,
April 2014-March 2015 ranked as the warmest 12-month periods on record, and
The latest reports show that May 2014-April 2015 has followed up by tying that record.
Now, with the El Niño strengthening into a more classic pattern - with warmer sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific, near Peru and Ecuador - and with projections showing that it could be a fairly significant event this year, the risk of 2015 far surpassing 2014 on the list of hottest years on record is rising.

Why?

In general, as NOAA states in their latest Global Analysis, "El Niño conditions tend to enhance global temperatures, with stronger events having generally larger impacts."

El Niño 2015 is turning into a fairly rare one. Whereas a typical El Niño develops throughout the spring, summer and fall, peaks in early winter and then dissipates early the following year, this one developed much earlier.

Even in 2014, as the ocean and atmosphere patterns "struggled" to line up, model projections were warning of a possible "super" El Niño, like the one seen in 1997/98. Now, with a weak Central Pacific El Niño (aka El Niño "Modoki") called in March, and the pattern strengthening and pushing towards the east, there's the potential for this one to both peak in the summer and persist into early 2016.

The only El Niño on record that's similar is the one that occurred between 1986-1987.


The above graph, from SkepticalScience.com, shows "The Escalator" pattern of warming since 1970 (with the overall rising trend indicated in red). Very obvious in the data are three large "steps" in global temperatures - 1977-1978, 1986-1987 and 1997-1998, and two smaller ones - 2002-2003 and 2012-2013. These represent periods when temperatures spiked in a very short time, resulting in a new temperature plateau. Even though these plateaus persisted for some time after, and some even showed a slight cooling trend, they did not affect the overall warming trend. The next spike simply drove global temperatures to an even higher level.

Other than the final step (in 2012-13), each of others occurred during an El Niño - the '76-'77 and '77-'78 weak El Niños, the '86-'87 strong El Niño, the '97-'98 "super" El Niño (which drove 1998 to the top of the list of warmest years on record, where it stayed until 2005) and the moderate '02-'03 El Niño. Even in 2012, Pacific Ocean temperatures indicated a potential El Niño, however the pattern peaked in the fall, just shy of reaching El Niño status.

The '86-'87 "step," which went up by about 0.15oC, is the one that's of greatest interest here, though, as the strong and unusual El Niño that developed that year is the closest "analogue" pattern to what we're seeing so far in 2015.

As shown in the graphics above, global temperatures are already much warmer now than they were in 1986, when that "analogous" El Niño was developing.

If this year develops along the same lines, with a strong El Niño peaking this summer and persisting throughout the year, pumping a large amount of heat into the atmosphere, we could be in the middle of the next "step up" to a new, warmer plateau for the globe.

May 22, 2015 1:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

“Family values” creeps have a tough week: Josh Duggar, Bill O’Reilly & the sickening hypocrisy of the sanctimonious right:
With the news about the Duggars and Bill O’Reilly, it was a bad week for the holier-than-thou crowd


by Joan Walsh

"“19 and Counting” could be the name of a reality show on the 2016 GOP presidential field. (Poor Reince Priebus.) But it’s actually the name of that TLC show you never watch on the bewildering Duggar family, headed by Jim Bob and Michelle, who have 19 children (and counting?) because they claim that’s what God wants. There was always something off about them, but now comes news that oldest son Josh Duggar, executive director (until Thursday) of the Family Research Council’s political arm, sexually molested at least five young girls, including, it seems, his sisters, when he was a teenager.

As the details come out, it seems Jim Bob Duggar knew about his son’s abuse for at least a year, and tried to address the problem by taking him to talk to church elders, including a session with an Arkansas state trooper who later went to jail for child pornography. No, I’m not making this up. Then they sent him for “counseling” to a program that consisted of remodeling homes. When police investigated three years later, they wouldn’t let them talk to young Josh. No charges were brought against him.

We don’t know all the details of the wrongdoing of Josh Duggar, who was a minor at the time. We do have a lot of details about what his parents did, and it’s safe to say they handled the problem abysmally, for Josh and their daughters. By the way, it was observed on Twitter that the family’s sanctimonious statement mentions God six times, “daughters” none....

May 22, 2015 3:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

..."This comes on the heels of court transcripts revealing that bullying patriarch Bill O’Reilly, another purveyor of right-wing family values, used to return to his family and “go ballistic,” in his words, once dragging ex-wife down the stairs by the neck in front of his daughter. The daughter called his outbursts “scary and demeaning,” but also told a counselor she didn’t have much of a relationship with him because he was “never around.”

Of course, that didn’t stop O’Reilly from lecturing African Americans on how to raise their families, blaming black community troubles on “no supervision, kids with no fathers.” Now we know that instead of taking care of their own children, O’Reilly and the Duggars were out telling other people how to take care of theirs.

Or in the case of the Duggars and LGBT folks, telling them they couldn’t have any. With 19 biological kids of their own, the Duggars should have been way too tired for that level of homophobic activism, but they made time for it. And yes, a staple of their screechy preaching has been that LGBT people…wait for it…molest children.

Stellar mom Michelle Duggar made a robocall pushing the repeal of a local anti-discrimination ordinance, arguing that it would allow “child predators” to threaten “the safety and innocence of a child.” Maybe she had a guilty conscience.

Josh himself claimed anti-discrimination laws “protect one group of people over another” and make it hard to “protect the well-being of women and children in our cities.” (Think Progress has a handy guide to “9 times Josh lectured the world on family values before admitting he was a child molester.” Enjoy.)

On the campaign trail in 2012, Duggar told reporters “Our family is like the epitome of conservative values. People connect to us in that way.” Much of the 2016 GOP presidential field has connected to Josh, at least, who seems to have a vanity photo with a most of the 19 (or so) and counting GOP presidential contenders. The entire Republican field is united on the inferiority of gay families, but hails parents like the Duggars, who let their son prey on his sisters for a year without going to authorities.
Meanwhile, Fox News remains silent about the behavior of O’Reilly, because his angry white patriarch shtick is the core of its brand. The NFL is now more sensitive to the concerns of women’s rights advocates than Fox is. It was a tough week for sanctimonious creeps, but it wasn’t so great for the rest of us, either."

May 22, 2015 3:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Both sides say Ireland has voted to legalize gay marriage

DUBLIN – Ireland has voted resoundingly to legalize gay marriage in the world's first national vote on the issue, leaders on both sides of the Irish referendum declared Saturday even as official ballot counting continued.

Senior figures from the "no" campaign, who sought to prevent Ireland's constitution from being amended to permit same-sex marriages, say the only question is how large the "yes" side's margin of victory will be from Friday's vote.

"We're the first country in the world to enshrine marriage equality in our constitution and do so by popular mandate. That makes us a beacon, a light to the rest of the world of liberty and equality. So it's a very proud day to be Irish," said Leo Varadkar, a Cabinet minister who came out as gay at the start of a government-led effort to amend Ireland's conservative Catholic constitution.

"There is going to be a very substantial majority for a yes vote. I'm not at all surprised by that to be honest with you," said Irish Sen. Ronan Mullen, one of only a handful of politicians who campaigned for rejection.

Political analyst Noel Whelan noted that "yes" majorities were being reported even in conservative rural districts and suggested the only question was how large the "yes" majority would be when all ballots in this predominantly Catholic nation of 4.6 million are counted.

Varadkar, who personally watched the votes being tabulated at the County Dublin ballot center, said the Irish capital looks to have voted around 70 percent in favor of gay marriage, while most districts outside the capital also were reporting strong "yes" leads. He said not a single district yet had reported a "no" majority. Official results come later Saturday..."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/05/23/ireland-gay-marriage/

May 23, 2015 8:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All the results are in, and the returning officer, Ríona Ní Fhlanghaile, has declared that Ireland has passed the same-sex marriage referendum by 1,201,607 votes to 734,300. That’s 62.1% yes to 37.9% no. The total turnout was 60.5%.

May 23, 2015 5:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"New LGBT protections to take effect without Gov. Hogan’s signature

Maryland legislation promising new protections for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community will become law next month without Gov. Larry Hogan’s signature, according to aides from the governor’s office.

One of the proposals requires health insurers to offer fertility treatments as a benefit regardless of a person’s sexual orientation, while the other allows transgender residents to change the gender on their birth certificates.

The House and Senate approved the legislation by wide margins earlier this year, and the LGBT community was watching carefully to see what Hogan (R) would do. Equality Maryland, one of the state’s leading gay rights advocates, named the proposals among its top legislative priorities.

Hogan has until June 3 to either sign or veto the measures before they become law by default. His office said Friday that he has decided to do nothing, allowing the measures to take effect without his explicit approval.

“We’re really happy,” Equality Maryland executive director Carrie Evans said. “These are bills that we worked very hard on, and they had bipartisan support in the General Assembly.”

The decision provides one of the earliest indications of how Maryland’s new governor will approach social issues, suggesting he has little appetite for stirring up controversy over such matters..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/new-lgbt-protections-to-become-law-in-md-without-gov-hogans-signature/2015/05/24/1c11e57a-018a-11e5-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html

May 25, 2015 8:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The decision provides one of the earliest indications of how Maryland’s new governor will approach social issues, suggesting he has little appetite for stirring up controversy over such matters..."

well, this is Maryland

what's the point?

more urgent at this time to overturn the creeping socialism and the blatant governmental intrusion into people's private lives

May 25, 2015 8:42 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

There's no better example of blatant governmental intrusion into people's private lives than Republicans passing laws to interfere with womens' right to abortion such as requiring them to have an ultrasound wand rammed up their vaginas before they are allowed to have an abortion, or to have welfare recipients drug tested under the guise that anyone receiving government money should be drug tested when those Republican politicians receiving government money reject amendments requiring they be drug tested - hypocrites.

May 25, 2015 1:24 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And let's not forrget the blatant example of Republican governmental intrusion into people's private lives of trying to dictate to people what the gender of their marriage partners should be. Talk about Big Brother.

May 25, 2015 1:31 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"We don’t know all the details of the wrongdoing of Josh Duggar, who was a minor at the time. We do have a lot of details about what his parents did, and it’s safe to say they handled the problem abysmally, for Josh and their daughters. By the way, it was observed on Twitter that the family’s sanctimonious statement mentions God six times, “daughters” none....".

The Duggars think if they mention god a lot in response to their child sexual assault scandal and avoid acknowledging the victims it'll trick people into thinking they're good people because of the facade of holiness.

May 25, 2015 1:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

" the blatant governmental intrusion into people's private lives"

Here's some of the intrusions GOP state governments force into poor people's lives:

" In Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, for instance, they are making long lists of prohibited foods for those who use SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs.) The list of other prohibited purchases includes “herbs, spices, or seasonings,” all nuts, red and yellow potatoes, smoothies, spaghetti sauce, “soups, salsas, ketchup,” sauerkraut, pickles, dried beans sold in bulk, and white or albacore tuna."

Sean Hannity suggested:

"I don’t believe people are going to bed hungry. Do you know how much, do you ever go shopping? I go sometimes but I hate it. Do you ever go? … you can get, for instance I have friends of mine who eat rice and beans all the time. Beans protein, rice. Inexpensive. You can make a big pot of this for a week for negligible amounts of money and you can feed your whole family.

Look, you should have vegetables and fruit in there as well, but if you need to survive you can survive off it. It’s not ideal but you could get some cheap meat and throw in there as well for protein. There are ways to live really, really cheaply."


Sorry Sean, but Gov. Walker of Wisconsin believes vegetables like dried beans are luxury items and not allowed for poor folks to buy.

But Wisconsin has nothing on Brownbackistan, formerly known as Kansas. The state has already outlawed the use of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program debit cards at a range of businesses, including movie theaters, college sports games (?) and cruise ships. (There goes the welfare cruise ship business!) Kansas TANF recipients also are unable to withdraw more than $25 a day from their accounts. That means to withdraw $100, they’ll pay five bank fees (since ATMs only dispense $20s). Banks win, the poor lose.

How upset are you about those GOP state government intrusions into the private lives of poor folks who must rely on being able to obtain and use TANF and SNAP funds to feed their families?

May 25, 2015 5:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"There's no better example of blatant governmental intrusion into people's private lives than Republicans passing laws to interfere with womens' right to abortion such as requiring them to have an ultrasound wand rammed up their vaginas before they are allowed to have an abortion,"

actually, there are any number of better examples, since that's not an example at all

the most basic task of government is protect the life of the weak

willful murder should have no rest or sanctuary

"or to have welfare recipients drug tested under the guise that anyone receiving government money should be drug tested when those Republican politicians receiving government money reject amendments requiring they be drug tested - hypocrites."

actually, the government takes steps to ensure that any recipients of government grants use the funds for the specified purpose

if someone claims they are in desperate need without recourse but to seek governmental assistance, it would make sense for the government to make sure the money isn't going to feed an addiction

I don't know what "Republican politicians" are "receiving government money" but all recipients of government funding are required to be audited with procedures specified by the government

May 26, 2015 11:22 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Republican governors couldn't care less about "ensuring any recipients of government grants use the funds for the specified purpose".

People on welfare use drugs at a far lower rate than the general population, so low in fact that those governments that test welfare recipients spend far more on the drug testing than they save on not paying welfare benefits to drug users. It is the intention of such governments that no one spend money on illegal drugs so if those politicians weren't hypocrites they'd drug test all the elected politicians as well but they don't because this isn't about principle, its about demonizing the poor to make the general public more amenable to cutting social programs for societies most vulnerable and concentrating more money in the hands of the wealthy.

"I don't know what "Republican politicians" are "receiving government money"".

Oh come on, don't play stupid. All elected politicians are paid by the government. If Republican politicians want to drug test welfare recipients of government money then its only fair they be drug tested themselves. They voted down all such amendments to their welfare drug testing bills because they are rank hypocrites. And statistics show the wealthy use drugs at far greater rates than the poor.

May 26, 2015 11:51 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Fetuses aren't person's under the law (and to the best of my knowledge no country anywhere has ever ruled that they are) so abortion isn't murder. The supreme court ruled in Roe V Wade that abortion is legal so it is blatant government intrusion into private lives for Republican politicians to pass laws requiring women to submit to having an ultrasound wand rammed up their vaginas in order to get permission to have an abortion. We as people own our bodies and the government has no moral right to tell anyone what they can do with their body, whether its abortion, drug use, prostitution, or suicide. Republicans are big on intruding into people's private lives on all these fronts.

May 26, 2015 11:58 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"Kansas TANF recipients also are unable to withdraw more than $25 a day from their accounts. That means to withdraw $100, they’ll pay five bank fees (since ATMs only dispense $20s). Banks win, the poor lose.".

This serves no purpose other than to make life more difficult for poor people and give yet more money to the filthy rich cheating banks. If a poor person has to pay rent in cash they need to make over 20 trips to the ATM to pay $400 in rent. They'll pay on average $1.50 to $2.00 per withdrawal meaning this law results in a 10% cut in benefits. And they can't just make repeated withdrawls from the atm on the same day, there's a 24 hour waiting period so they have to make the trip to the atm 22 days in a row to pay their $400 in rent. A lot of banks don't put atms in poor neighborhoods so this means a heavy burden to find the transportation to get to the atm 22 days in a row as well.

Once again, all these programs restricting welfare spending for the poor aren't there to prevent the already virtually non-existant cheating, they're there to demonize the poor by pretending there's a problem with poor people spending their welfare checks on jewlery, gambling, and cruise ships. If the general public can be conned into believing welfare recipients have it so good they're spending their checks on extravagant luxuries it'll make it easier for the Republicans to cut the social safety net and concentrate more money in the hands of the wealthy.

May 26, 2015 12:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And let's not forget the blatant intrusion into private lives of the Republican "Patriot" Act that has authorized mass data collection on the private lives of all Americans.

May 26, 2015 12:34 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Jeb Bush's favourite author rejects democracy, says the hyper-rich should seize power

At the height of 2011’s debt ceiling crisis, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offered a candid explanation of why his party was willing to threaten permanent harm to the U.S. economy unless Congress agreed to change our founding document. “The Constitution must be amended to keep the government in check,” McConnell alleged. “We’ve tried persuasion. We’ve tried negotiations. We’ve tried elections. Nothing has worked.”

The amendment McConnell and his fellow Republicans sought was misleadingly named the “Balanced Budget Amendment” — a name that was misleading not because it was inaccurate, but because it was incomplete. The amendment wouldn’t have simply forced a balanced budget at the federal level, it would have forced spending cuts that were so severe that they would have cost 15 million people their jobs and caused “the economy to shrink by about 17 percent instead of growing by an expected 2 percent,” according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. It was, in essence, an effort to permanently impose Tea Party economics on the nation, and to use a manufactured crisis to do so.

Few politicians are willing to admit what McConnell admitted when he confessed that elections have not “worked” to bring about the policy Republicans tried to impose on the nation in 2011. Elected officials, after all, only hold their jobs at the sufferance of the voters, and a politician who openly admits that they only believe in democracy insofar as it achieves their desired ends gives the middle finger to those voters and to the very process that allows those voters to have a say in how they are governed.

May 26, 2015 1:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Charles Murray is a favourite author of Republicans beginning in 1994 when he wrote a book arguing that black people are genetically programmed to be less intelligent than whites. Government “by the people” is the last thing Murray cares to see. Murray admits that the kind of government he seeks, a libertarian fantasy where much of our nation’s regulatory and welfare state has been dismantled, is “beyond the reach of the electoral process and the legislative process.”

His hypocritically titled book "By The People", however, rejects outright the idea that Murray’s vision for a less generous and well-regulated society can be achieved through appeals to elected officials — or even through appeals to unelected judges. The government Murray seeks is “not going to happen by winning presidential elections and getting the right people appointed to the Supreme Court.” Rather, "By The People", is a call for people sympathetic to Murray’s goals — and most importantly, for fantastically rich people sympathetic to those goals — to subvert the legitimate constitutional process entirely.

“The emergence of many billion-dollar-plus private fortunes over the last three decades,” Murray writes, “has enabled the private sector to take on ambitious national or even international tasks that formerly could be done only by nation-states.” Murray’s most ambitious proposal is a legal defense fund, which “could get started if just one wealthy American cared enough to contribute, say, a few hundred million dollars,” that would essentially give that wealthy American veto power over much of U.S. law.

Murray, in other words, would rather transfer much of our sovereign nation’s power to govern itself to a single privileged individual than continue to live under the government America’s voters have chosen. It’s possible that no American has done more to advance the cause of monarchy since Benedict Arnold.

May 26, 2015 1:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In the "Careful what you wish for" category:
A Republican backed lawsuit could see the U.S. supreme court wiping out health insurance for millions of people covered by Obamacare. But it's Republicans — not White House officials — who have been talking about damage control. Twenty-six of the 34 states that would be most affected by the ruling have Republican governors, and 22 of the 24 GOP Senate seats up in 2016 are in those states.

Obama's law offers subsidized private insurance to people without access to it on the job. The health care law has a miswording in it that says subsides are availablle in state exchanges rather than saying in both federal and state exchanges as all involved in creating the law agreed was intended. In the court case, opponents of the law argue that its literal wording allows the federal government to subsidize coverage only in states that set up their own health insurance markets. Most states have not done so, because of the intense partisanship over "Obamacare" and in some cases because of technical problems. Instead, they rely on the federal HealthCare.gov website.

If the court invalidates the subsidies in those states, an estimated 8 million people could lose coverage. The results would be "ugly," said Sandy Praeger, a former Kansas insurance commissioner.

Republicans have vehemently opposed the law and voted over 50 times to repeal it but have been unable to come up with an alternative to Obamacare. If the court kills Obamacare the public will blame Republicans who have talked long about an alternative but haven't made any serious effort to come up with one. The Republican created mess will then play out during the 2016 presidential campaign leaving Republicans fumbling for excuses for their reckless actions.

May 26, 2015 1:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

A Pew Research Center poll taken this month found that only 23% of the public and 37% of Republicans say the GOP leaders are keeping their campaign promises.

These numbers are down from 2011, when a third of the public felt that way and 54% of Republicans said the same. In the midterm elections of that previous fall, the GOP was handed the majority in the House for the first time since losing it in 2006. Democrats kept the Senate for four more years.

Both years are well below the approval numbers of 1995. That year, after taking majority control of Congress for the first time in four decades, 59% of voters and fully 89% of Republicans said GOP leaders were keeping their promises.

The ongoing frustration with congressional Republicans goes beyond broken promises, though. More than half of their constituents (55%) disapprove of the GOP leaders' job performance, up from 44% in February.

That mark, coming only weeks after the new Congress began work, should have been taken by the leadership as a two-by-four upside the head. But clearly they did nothing to change course.

May 26, 2015 1:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"People on welfare use drugs at a far lower rate than the general population,"

if so, I'm glad to hear it

"so low in fact that those governments that test welfare recipients spend far more on the drug testing than they save on not paying welfare benefits to drug users"

hard to measure the preventative effect, not testing might raise rates of drug use

"It is the intention of such governments that no one spend money on illegal drugs"

that is the intent of the current U.S. government and I, as a convinced libertarian, oppose such governmental involvement in personal decisions, no matter how poor those decisions are

it is not, however, why welfare recipients are tested for drugs

they are tested for the same reason they can't use TANF funds for Caribbean cruises

the purpose for this use of government funds is to provide the poor with the necessities of existence while they get back on their feet

"so if those politicians weren't hypocrites they'd drug test all the elected politicians"

the politicians you refer to are receiving compensation for services rendered

they're underpaid and they have no obligation other than to provide the service they are paid for

"as well but they don't because this isn't about principle, its about demonizing the poor to make the general public more amenable to cutting social programs for societies most vulnerable and concentrating more money in the hands of the wealthy"

typical baseless leftist rhetoric

wealth is not to be parceled out by the government

that's a form of theft

"Oh come on, don't play stupid. All elected politicians are paid by the government"

I assumed you meant something other than salary because you used term "Republican"

perhaps you're not aware that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders also receive these payments

"Fetuses aren't person's under the law so abortion isn't murder"

you seem to love laws that permit evil

you would have had a blast in Nazi Germany

it's actually not uncommon for a murderer of a pregnant woman to also be charged with the murder of the fetus as well

"The supreme court ruled in Roe V Wade that abortion is legal"

a court in a more morally relative age ruled that women may murder their unborn children until the children can survive outside the womb

that age has steadily declined since and someday Roe v Wade will be irrelevant

as of now, most Americans agree that abortion is evil


May 26, 2015 9:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

""Kansas TANF recipients also are unable to withdraw more than $25 a day from their accounts. That means to withdraw $100, they’ll pay five bank fees (since ATMs only dispense $20s). Banks win, the poor lose.".

This serves no purpose other than to make life more difficult for poor people and give yet more money to the filthy rich cheating banks. If a poor person has to pay rent in cash they need to make over 20 trips to the ATM to pay $400 in rent. They'll pay on average $1.50 to $2.00 per withdrawal meaning this law results in a 10% cut in benefits. And they can't just make repeated withdrawls from the atm on the same day, there's a 24 hour waiting period so they have to make the trip to the atm 22 days in a row to pay their $400 in rent. A lot of banks don't put atms in poor neighborhoods so this means a heavy burden to find the transportation to get to the atm 22 days in a row as well."

I completely agree with Priya here. This policy is ludicrous.

"And let's not forget the blatant intrusion into private lives of the Republican "Patriot" Act that has authorized mass data collection on the private lives of all Americans."

I tend to agree more than disagree with Priya here, as well.

"Jeb Bush's favourite author rejects democracy, says the hyper-rich should seize power"

don't know about this but at least Bush supports the Connstitution

Hillary Clinton has become the first major candidate of either party to propose amending the Bill of Rights

she wants to rewrite the Constitution to overturn Citizens United

"A Republican backed lawsuit could see the U.S. supreme court wiping out health insurance for millions of people covered by Obamacare. Obama's law offers subsidized private insurance to people without access to it on the job. The health care law has a miswording in it that says subsides are availablle in state exchanges rather than saying in both federal and state exchanges as all involved in creating the law agreed was intended"

not true

the law is written as intended

Nancy, Harry & Barry thought they could manipulate the states to do what they wanted

it backfired on them

"If the court invalidates the subsidies in those states, an estimated 8 million people could lose coverage"

most people who receive these subsidies receive no benefit

they still can't afford to go to the doctor because of high deductibles

"The Republican created mess will then play out during the 2016 presidential campaign leaving Republicans fumbling for excuses for their reckless actions."

those receiving subsidies generally don't vote

"A Pew Research Center poll taken this month found that only 23% of the public and 37% of Republicans say the GOP leaders are keeping their campaign promises."

schizo nature of the public

the Republicans are doing exactly as they said

they're even working with Barry to pass a trade bill

just wait until they have the White House too

sayonara, gay agenda!!

May 26, 2015 9:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"sayonara, gay agenda!!"

Tell that to Ireland!

Best photo on the Internet today: A rainbow over Dublin. Proof that nature has a sense of humor.

May 27, 2015 11:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

why would I?

I live in America

May 27, 2015 11:31 AM  
Anonymous Josh Duggar is a heterosexual Christian pedophile said...

Yesterday, GOP presidential contender Mike Huckabee posted a lengthy Facebook status affirming his “support for the Duggar family,” saying that Josh Duggar – who confessed to molestation – is being attacked by “blood-thirsty media” and deserves “our support.”

This set off a surprising reaction among Huckabee’s Facebook fans, with a chorus of his once-supportive Republican loyalists declaring that he had lost their vote over his words on the matter. Here are a few examples:

Katy Roe Sutton: Well you have lost my support! I'm a conservative Christian, and was once a Duggar supporter, but I believe that 14 years old or not he should have never been allowed to continue to live in the home with the girls, and the show should have never aired. He damaged those girls for he (sic) rest of their lives, and anyone who can carry on and say it's ok now because he admitted he was wrong is just as sick as him.

Andy Dittmaier: I respectfully disagree. His behavior is unforgivable to me and so is covering it up and allowing it to continue. Can't hid behind Jesus to excuse all bad behavior.

Laura Smith Ryan: You all are insane. He molested children. And Mr. Huckabee if he was a child and not aware of his actions, why is a 14 year old tried as an adult for killing. Give me a break. So if abusers repent they dont deserve to be punished??? or just "good" Christians on tv. Doe it worry anyone he has children. Wow.

Carisa Knox: And you, sir, just lost my vote. As a child I was molested by a family member. It was covered up and lied about in a whole bunch of half truths, most of which were designed to give him a pass and discredit me and paint me as a horrible person. There is no bloodthirst here, but those girls, including his sisters deserve justice. That you c an say the parents are good people....No. They are worse than their son because they covered for him at the expense of their daughters and other girls!!! That is a complete violation of parental trust. There is nothing that can rehabilitate that. You can't whit wash this and make it okay. And in trying to do so, it tells me that you do not have my daughters best interest at heart.

La Shaine Jones Reynolds: I was really happy that you decided to run for president but now you have lost my support. I'm (sic) was a victim of sexual molestation and it may go away for the abuser, but it doesn't for the victims. We may forgive, but we don't forget. Child molesters takes away our chance of having a normal child, a normal teenager, and a normal adult. I will no longer support or vote for you. Nobody is thinking about the victims on all this.

Read more at Huckabee's FB page

May 27, 2015 11:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This story keeps getting ickier. From radaronline.com:

After Josh Duggar admitted to his parents Jim Bob and Michelle that he had fondled multiple minor females in his home, his parents say they were swift to move into action, and get him treatment. Only RadarOnline.com can reveal the faith-based center, founded by a controversial figure.

Radar has identified the facility as the Insitute in Basic Life Principles Training Center in Little Rock, founded by Bill Gothard. Gothard was previously accused of sexually grooming and inappropriately touching young women in his ministry, and while he was later cleared of any wrongdoing, he resigned amid the scandal.

Today, the centers claim to “strengthen individuals and families through sound Biblical teaching and character development opportunities and to demonstrate Christ’s love through serving,” according to a church website.

More about Gothard from wikipedia.com:

On February 27, 2014 the Board of Directors of the Institute in Basic Life Principles placed Gothard on indefinite administrative leave while it investigated claims that he sexually harassed and molested several female employees.[31] The claims had been publicized on Recovering Grace, a website and support group for former followers of Gothard's teachings.[32] As many as 34 women who worked for Gothard claim that he harassed them; four claim that he molested them,[1] and one of the accusers claims that Gothard molested her when she was 16 years old.[33]

On March 6, 2014—a week after the investigation started—Gothard announced his immediate resignation as president of the IBLP. According to ATI administrative director David Waller, Gothard felt compelled to resign in order to comply with a directive in the Gospel of Matthew to "go and be reconciled" if "your brother or sister has something against you."[34]

On June 17, 2014 IBLP issued a statement,[35] summarizing the investigation conducted by "outside legal counsel". In it they noted that although no criminal activity was uncovered, Bill Gothard had acted in an "inappropriate manner" so "is not permitted to serve in any counseling, leadership, or Board role within the IBLP ministry".

Founder of Josh Duggar’s ‘treatment center’ left after ‘sexually grooming’ teens and young women

May 27, 2015 11:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Greenland’s Parliament Unanimously Approves Same-Sex Marriage

After Ireland’s stunning victory last week the good news keeps on coming with Greenland’s parliament having decided, by unanimous vote no less, to legalize marriage equality.

Greenland, which technically falls under the Kingdom of Denmark but is autonomous in its lawmaking, had already adopted Denmark’s partnership laws to grant same-sex couples some rights. When Denmark legalized marriage equality in 2012, an effort was started in Greenland so that the country could follow suit and change equivalent partnership recognition into marriage.

On May 26, and just two months after the same-sex marriage bill’s first reading, Greenland’s parliament voted to do just that, unanimously approving a same-sex marriage bill 27-0 with only two abstentions.

The legislation also formalizes and streamlines adoption rights for same-sex couples, bringing their rights into step with those offered to heterosexuals.

Interestingly, Greenland in fact first considered same-sex marriage in 2010, before Denmark, but it was thought at the time that Denmark should take the lead on this issue, with Greenland following if Denmark made the change. Political upheaval due to corruption scandals and snap elections prevented earlier action, but with the presiding government backing the bill and many high profiled Lutheran religious figures also supporting same-sex marriage, there was little that stood in the way of this important change to the law.

Greenland’s law is now scheduled to go into effect on October 1 of this year, and this makes Greenland the 22nd country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, following hotly on the heels of the Republic of Ireland. So who will be next?..."


Read more at http://www.care2.com/causes/greenlands-parliament-unanimously-approves-same-sex-marriage.html

May 30, 2015 7:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

He's gone from hope to nope.

In an interview with Esquire, Shepard Fairey, the artist who made the iconic Obama "Hope" poster, was asked if he thought Obama "has lived up to" the poster. His answer: "Not even close."

That's it. Cue up the Paul Ryan 2012 Republican National Convention bit about college grads living at their parents' house "staring up at faded Obama posters." Obama's done.

It's the perfect metaphor for the Obama administration for Republicans. That widespread enthusiasm for Obama in 2008 has eroded, and with less than two years left in office, one of his most visible supporters, the guy who made the most iconic image of the Obama years has even turned on him.

"Obama has had a really tough time, but there have been a lot of things that he's compromised on that I never would have expected," he said. "I mean, drones and domestic spying are the last things I would have thought he'd support."

Politicians have a tendency to over-promise and under-perform, but Obama especially aimed high with his campaign rhetoric. And people like Fairey, who were pretty clearly enamored of him, set their own expectations that Obama has had a hard time living up to. Democrats still overwhelmingly approve of Obama, but it's clear some think he hasn't lived up to the hype.

Or the Hope

May 30, 2015 9:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"After Ireland’s stunning victory last week the good news keeps on coming with Greenland’s parliament having decided, by unanimous vote no less, to legalize marriage equality"

I used to, as a libertarian, agree with the idea that homosexuality, whether right or wrong, should not be illegal. And I thought, even though I opposed gay "marriage", that it was a trivial issue and not an evil development on the level of, say, abortion. I starting to think I was wrong. The gay agenda's goal has always been to have homosexuality be considered normal and of equal esteem with heterosexuality. Even that would not be a problem as long as it remained a matter of lively and legitimate debate. Now, however, the gay agenda has sought, and is getting, governmental enforcement of homosexual esteem. This is bad news for all people and an evil development. In short, the gay agenda has developed into a an evil force akin to Nazism and Communism. We now have gay advocates purposely going to bakeries they know are owned by people who disagree with gay "marriage" to make sure they either acquiesce to the idea of equality of esteem for gays or are banned from society. This is naked religious persecution, a step toward kristallnacht.

Brendan O'Neill, editor of spiked, a libertarian page in the British Isles, has written an insightful article pointing out that in all the celebration about gay "marriage" in Ireland, few people are saying anything about marriage. Most of the rhetoric is about "validation" and "acceptance" of gay people. Let's face it, as I've said many times, gays never wanted to marry. They don't agree with traditional social mores. They want government to force people to like them.

here's Brendan's piece:

"The most striking thing following the Irish referendum on gay marriage is how few people are talking about gay marriage. Amid the near-global cheering that greeted the vote in favour of instituting gay marriage, there was barely any commentary on the institution of gay marriage. Sure, there was a handful of on-air marriage proposals in Dublin as the news cameras rolled, and the tailend of a BBC TV report informed us when the first gay marriages in Ireland would take place (Autumn). But given that this referendum was all about opening up a social institution to which gays had apparently been brutally denied entry, the lack of post-referendum talk about actual marriage was remarkable."

May 30, 2015 9:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Instead of saying ‘We can finally get married’, the most common response to the referendum result from both the leaders of the Yes campaign and their considerable army of supporters in the media and political classes has been: ‘Gays have finally been validated.’ Across the spectrum, from the drag queens who led the Yes lobby to the right-wing politicians who backed them, all the talk was of ‘recognition’, not marriage. Ireland’s deputy PM Joan Burton said the Yes vote was about ‘acceptance in your own country’. Writing in the Irish Examiner, a psychotherapist said ‘the referendum was about more than marriage equality… it was about validation and full acceptance [of gay people]’. (Tellingly, Ireland’s psychotherapy industry played a key role in backing the Yes campaign.) PM Enda Kenny also said the referendum was about more than marriage — it was a question of gay people’s ‘fragile and deeply personal hopes [being] realised’. Or in the words of novelist Joseph O’Connor, the Yes vote was an act of ‘societal empathy’ with a section of the population.

The official Yes campaign went so far as to describe the Yes victory as a boost for the health and wellbeing of all Irish citizens, especially gay ones. A spokesperson said ‘the effect of legal equality goes beyond the letter of the law… it enters our daily lives and our interaction with others’. In ‘embracing’ gay people, Ireland had ‘improv[ed] the health and wellbeing of all our citizens’. In short, the Yes result made people feel good. A writer for the Irish Times described his gay friends’ pre-referendum ‘nagging shadow’, a ‘feeling that [they are] less somehow’, and he claimed the Yes victory finally confirmed for them that they now enjoy society’s ‘support, kindness and respect’. Fintan O’Toole said the Yes victory was about making gays feel ‘fully acknowledged’.

And you thought it was about marriage? How wrong you were. All the commentary on how the referendum was ‘about more than marriage’, how it went ‘beyond the letter of the law’ to touch on something deeper, something psychic, confirms that the campaign for gay marriage is not about achieving social equality — no, it’s about securing parity of esteem, which is very different. The march of gay marriage has a stronger relationship with the new culture of therapy, and the need for recognition, than it does with the more longstanding ideal of legal equality and the need for rights. What is being sought here is not really the right to marry but rather social and cultural validation of one’s lifestyle — ‘societal empathy’ — particularly from the state. What we have witnessed in Ireland is not a new dawn of social equality but the further entrenchment of the value of cultural equality, and this is far from positive.

Ireland’s focus on recognition rather than rights, and the celebration of gay marriage as a means of validating gay people’s sense of worth, echoes the discussion about gay marriage in nations across the West. Time and again, the language used has been that of therapy rather than autonomy. In her excellent 2004 essay ‘The liberal case against gay marriage’, Susan M Shell noted the way that early agitators for gay marriage seemed to be primarily concerned with ‘relieving adult anxiety’, what some of them referred to as their ‘elemental fear’ of not being ‘valued’ (1). Activists spoke of how ‘the lack of legal recognition [for our relationships] rankled more and more’. In the words of the authors of The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage (2007), activists primarily want ‘the sanction of the state for our intimate relationships’. This search for state sanction, for external recognition, has been echoed in the response to the Irish referendum. ‘My country has acknowledged that we exist’, said a gay Irish businessman.

May 30, 2015 9:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What we have here is not the politics of autonomy, but the politics of identity. Where the politics of autonomy was about ejecting the state from gay people’s lives — whether it was Stonewall rioters kicking the cops out of their bars or Peter Tatchell demanding the dismantling of all laws forbidding homosexual acts — the politics of identity calls upon the state to intervene in gay people’s lives, and offer them its recognition, its approval. For much of the past 50 years, radical gay-rights activism was in essence about saying ‘We do not need the approval of the state to live how we choose’; now, in the explicit words of The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage, it’s about seeking ‘the sanction of the state for our intimate relationships’. The rise of gay marriage over the past 10 years speaks, profoundly, to the diminution of the culture of autonomy, and its replacement by a far more nervous, insecure cultural outlook that continually requires lifestyle validation from external bodies. And the state is only too happy to play this authoritative role of approver of lifestyles, as evidenced in Enda Kenny’s patronising (yet widely celebrated) comment about Irish gays finally having their ‘fragile and deeply personal hopes realised’.

What is being sought through gay marriage is not the securing of rights but the boosting of esteem. And this is a problem for those of us who believe in liberty. For where old, positive forms of social equality were a narrowly legal accomplishment, concerned simply with either removing discriminatory laws or passing legislation forbidding discrimination at work or in the public sphere, cultural equality is far more about… well, culture; the general outlook; even people’s attitudes. It is not satisfied with simply legislating against discrimination and then allowing people to get on with their lives; rather, it is concerned with reshaping the cultural climate, discussion, how people express themselves in relation to certain groups. In the apt words of the Yes campaign, this goes ‘beyond the letter of the law’. It is undoubtedly the business of society to ensure social equality for gays, so that they may work and live as they choose free from persecution or harassment. But is it the job of society to ensure that there is parity of esteem for gays? That they feel good? That they feel validated, respected? I would say no, for then we invite the state not simply to remove the barriers to gay people’s engagement in public life but to interfere at a much more psychic level in both gay people’s lives, in order to offer ‘sanction for their intimate relationships’, and in other, usually religious people’s lives, in order to monitor their refusal to validate gay people’s lifestyles and offer them ‘support, kindness and respect’.

May 30, 2015 9:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is why we have seen, across the West, the bizarre ‘gay cake’ phenomenon, where there are more and more cases of traditionalist bakers (and other businesses) being purposefully approached by campaigners to provide services to gay weddings. The aim of this very modern form of religious persecution is to discover and expose those whose attitudes have not yet been corrected by the top-down enforcement of parity of esteem, of protected feelings, for gays. That cultural equality is concerned not merely with altering laws, but with reshaping culture and even belief itself, is clear from the growing trend for harassing those who do not bow before the altar of gay marriage. Joan Burton made clear that this trend will now intensify in Ireland, when she said there will be no ‘conscience clause’ in the New Ireland: it would be intolerable, she said, to ‘exclude some people or some institutions from the operation of marriage equality’. That is, all must agree, all must partake; there can be no room for the exercise of individual conscience when it comes to the engineering of a new cultural climate.

What Ireland crystallises is that gay marriage has nothing to do with liberty. The presentation of this as a liberal, or even libertarian, issue is highly disingenuous. For in truth, gay marriage massively expands the authority of the state in our everyday lives, in our most intimate relationships and even over our consciences. It simultaneously makes the state the sanctioner of acceptable intimate relationships, the ultimate provider of validation to our lifestyle choices, while empowering it to police the cultural attitudes and consciences of those of a more religious or old-fashioned persuasion. This is bad for gays, because it reduces them, in Kenny’s words, to ‘fragile’ creatures who require constant recognition from others; and it is bad for those uncomfortable with gay marriage, since their ability to in act in accordance with their conscience is limited. Making the state the validator of our intimacies and the policer of our moral outlooks is a very dangerous game.

This goes some way to explaining why every single wing of the Irish state supported gay marriage, from the police, who proudly waved the rainbow flag, to all the political parties, the public sector, the health establishment and the cultural establishment. It’s because they recognise, at a gut level, that unlike pretty much every other demand for liberty or equality in modern times, the campaign for gay marriage does nothing to threaten their authority — on the contrary, it extends it, in a way that the most authoritarian among them could only have dreamt of. Strikingly, Fintan O’Toole celebrated the referendum result by saying that ‘Ireland has left tolerance far behind’, by which he meant that the New Ireland actively encourages ‘respect’, not ‘mere toleration’, of minority groups. He’s right, but not in the way he thinks: the new era of state-monitored cultural equality, of expanded state authority over more and more areas of our intimate lives and moral beliefs, does indeed mean that Ireland is leaving tolerance behind, and looks set to become a less tolerant country.

May 30, 2015 9:55 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Yes, of course, because if society doesn't allow people to oppress gays and deny them equal rights then society is intolerant - society is only tolerant when it oppresses gays and lesbians and denies them equal rights.

Welcome to the anti-gay world of delusion where if you reject intolerance you yourself are being intolerant. Up is down, black is white and equality is intolerance.

May 30, 2015 2:21 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Remember, if you stop a serial killer from murdering people you are being intolerant.

May 30, 2015 2:23 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Remember, if you tell a racist he should respect blacks rather than going around saying they are genetically and mentally inferior to whites you're being intolerant.

Anti-gay bigots are messed up.

May 30, 2015 2:27 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Fairfax schools are beginning the process of exploring and impleminting science-based Family Life Education in relation to LGBT people.

May 31, 2015 12:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Fairfax schools are beginning the process of exploring and impleminting science-based Family Life Education in relation to LGBT people"

what exactly would "science-based" Family Life Education in relation to LGBT people be?

usually that means:

finding quotes from certain scientists giving their opinion about a topic that science has no explanation for because it is entirely subjective: why certain people say they are exclusively attracted to the same gender

and

no quotes from scientists giving any ideas about a situation that it entirely observable and testable: why AIDS is disproportionately present in the homosexual population of countries where homosexuality is tolerated?

indeed, one must wonder why the latter, observable and testable, has not been studied

because the answer is feared to be politically incorrect or, more likely, because it is perfectly obvious that self-identified homosexuals tend toward widespread random promiscuity

so what "science" teaching will they be implementing? (btw, it looks like teachers in Fairfax don't spell any better than in MCPS. "impleminting" sounds like something you'd see on a hillbilly ash tray in a souvenir shop in the Ozarks )

June 01, 2015 5:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Yes, of course, because if society doesn't allow people to oppress gays"

homosexuality is an idea and a behavior

by characterizing any disagreement with this idea or behavior as oppression, the gay agenda is doing what is has been doing in some many other ways: degrading our civilization

"and deny them equal rights"

homosexuals have every right every other citizen has under the Constitution

as the article above aptly explained, guarantee of esteem and social acceptability is not a right

"then society is intolerant - society is only tolerant when it oppresses gays and lesbians and denies them equal rights"

the gay agenda has now taken the evil position that society is not tolerant unless anyone who believes homosexuality is wrong is hunted down and forced to recant

"Welcome to the anti-gay world of delusion where if you reject intolerance you yourself are being intolerant. Up is down, black is white and equality is intolerance."

welcome to Priya's world "tolerance" is a government enforced program of thought control

"Remember, if you stop a serial killer from murdering people you are being intolerant."

and failure to bake a cake is akin to serial killing in Priya's world of evil wonders

"Remember, if you tell a racist he should respect blacks rather than going around saying they are genetically and mentally inferior to whites you're being intolerant.

Anti-gay bigots are messed up."

of course, conflating a personal preference with a racial identity is among the travesties of the gay agenda

the article above, you will see that the author is not an "anti-gay bigot"

except in the sense that he must be unless he completely endorses the doctrine of the gay agenda

which is, again, a program to, by governmental enforcement, impose the moral views of the homosexual community on our society and to require allegiance to it as a price for participation in our society

right?

June 01, 2015 6:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Remember, if you stop a serial killer from murdering people you are being intolerant."

probably no statement reveals more about what a nut case Priya is

if you don't serve someone, you might as well be killing them

it explains a lot

if someone were trying to kill you, you would be justified in using extreme measures to prevent it

if someone declined to bake you a cake, you wouldn't be justified in doing anything other than moving on

and, yet, if you feel they are equivalent, you wouldn't see any reason for not making equivalent responses

this is how a society descends into chaos

courtesy of the gay agenda

June 01, 2015 7:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Economy: They must be getting pretty desperate in the White House economic shop these days. When the revised GDP numbers showed a first-quarter decline of 0.7%, they started blaming the estimates themselves.

On the list of excuses for President Obama's ongoing failure to produce decent economic growth, we hadn't heard this one: A "seasonal adjustment" problem at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the GDP estimates.

White House chief economist Jason Furman says that, despite its seasonal adjustments, the BEA might not be accurately accounting for the effect of winter weather on growth.

But as the chart below shows, there's not much of a difference over the long term between economic growth from January through March and growth for the same year as a whole. Some years it's higher, some lower.

It's true that in recent years, growth in Q1 has tended to be subpar. But the problem isn't a lack of proper seasonal adjustment; it's that growth under Obama has been so tepid that even the slightest bump can knock it off stride. Just look at the numbers.

Since the Obama recovery started in June 2009, there have been four quarters where GDP was either flat or negative (compared with only three where growth exceeded 4%).

The overall growth in the 23 quarters of the Obama recovery has been 13.3%. That's less than half the average 26.7% growth rate achieved at this point in the previous 10 recoveries since World War II. Looked at another way, had Obama's recovery been merely average, GDP would be $1.9 trillion bigger today. That translates into $16,000 per household.

And over the years, Obama has blamed everything but his own no-growth policies.

In 2011 he pointed to the "Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring" and "problems ... in Spain, Italy and Greece." In 2012, it was "high gas prices" and "a crisis in Europe's economy." Then it was House Republicans' budget cuts, the government shutdown and the sequester.

Before all that, Obama said that recoveries from a financial crisis are always more sluggish, even though several studies dispute this. And, of course, Obama would reliably try to pin the blame on President Bush.

At least he appears to have given up on that excuse

June 01, 2015 8:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Caitlyn Jenner is beautiful!

June 01, 2015 12:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bruce says he's a woman

but he's not attracted to men and he has no plans to have surgery to alter his male anatomy

what's left but sexist stereotypes?

and a desire to boost the ratings for some vapid reality show

June 01, 2015 1:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Democratic presidential candidates are a sad lot. Hillary is clumsily positioning herself inside the left wing of her party. She won’t take questions. Bernie Sanders is 73, looks 10 years older, and says a 90 percent tax rate would be fine. Lincoln Chafee didn’t run for reelection in 2014 because his approval rating was so low. Jim Webb, former senator, is a better novelist than politician. As a campaigner, he’s invisible. Martin O’Malley, ex-governor of Maryland, is chiefly famous for his enthusiasm for taxing anything and everything.

Things may pick up. The media could start touting Hillary as the first woman president. But for now, things are grim. And it’s party-wide. The Democratic presidential candidates, as a group, are a metaphor for the entire Democratic party.

They’re old and tired and unimaginative. In the past, Democrats won the White House with bright, energetic, young candidates. In 1960, JFK was 43. Hillary's husband was 46 in 1992. FDR was 50 when he won the presidency. Today the youngest of the Dem Five is O’Malley at 52.

The Republican presidential race, in sharp contrast, features a whole new generation of candidates in their 40s: Marco Rubio (44), Bobby Jindal (43), Ted Cruz (44), and Scott Walker (47). Rand Paul and Chris Christie are slightly older at 52.

In Congress, Republicans are simply younger. The average age of House members is 54 for Republicans, 59 for Democrats. In the Senate, it’s 60 for Republicans, 62 for Democrats

For good reason, voters have a preference for electing governors to the White House. They’ve done things and have records. Senators give speeches and vote on legislation. Among Republicans, Jindal, Walker, Christie, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, and John Kasich have impressive records as governors. Democrats have Chafee, a flop as governor, and O’Malley, the tax man.

The simple truth is Democrats have a weak bench at the presidential level, Republicans a strong one. This is also true at the state level, where Republicans dominate. Democrats hold 18 of 50 governorships and a mere 30 of 98 legislative chambers. Republicans are blessed with the most legislative seats they’ve controlled since the 1920s. Democrats are barely hanging on.

No one else to turen to is the Hillary model. She lost to Obama in 2008. Now Clinton is the frontrunner for the nomination. Why? Because she’s the only Democrat in the race with strong name ID, a national following, and a powerful desire to be president. The GOP contest is filled with the cream of the Republican crop.

June 01, 2015 1:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Now Clinton is the frontrunner for the nomination. Why? Because she’s the only Democrat in the race with strong name ID, a national following, and a powerful desire to be president. The GOP contest is filled with the cream of the Republican crop."

And yet, Mr. Barnes' plagiariser, in the RCP 2016 Presidential Race averages:

Hillary Clinton beats Bush by 8.1 points

Hillary Clinton beats Walker by 9.7 points

Hillary Clinton beats Rubio by 7.6 points

Hillary Clinton beats Paul by 7.7 points

Hillary Clinton beats Cruz by 12.3 points

Hillary Clinton beats Huckabee by 9.5 points

Hillary Clinton beats beats Christie by 12.3 points

Hillary Clinton beats beats Carson by 11.5


It seems the GOP cream has already curdled.

June 01, 2015 5:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hillary hasn't even announced yet

let's look at the year before she last ran for President:

"Gallup’s 2007 national presidential polling strongly points to Clinton winning the 2008 Democratic nomination. Barring something unusual or otherwise unexpected, she is well positioned for the 2008 Democratic primaries. Obama has recently lost ground and is now in the weakest position relative to Clinton that he has been in all year.

No other announced or potential Democratic candidate has come close to threatening Clinton’s front-runner status since the campaign began, including former Vice President Al Gore and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

When 2008 is history and one looks retrospectively at where the race stands today, the key factors forecasting Clinton’s success will likely be the following:

Clinton Has Had a Consistent Run at the Top

Clinton has led the Democratic pack in every Gallup Poll conducted between November 2006 and October 2007. For most of this time, Clinton has led Obama by a double-digit margin.

Clinton’s lead over Obama has expanded to nearly 30 points in Gallup’s latest poll, conducted Oct. 12-14: 50% vs. 21%.

Clinton ’s Support Runs Deep

Clinton holds a commanding lead among nearly every major subgroup of potential Democratic primary voters. Some of her strongest showings are among women, nonwhites, those in lower-income households, those with less formal education, and Southerners.

Clinton Is Broadly Popular Among Democrats

Clinton enjoys high favorable ratings in the Democratic Party that extend well beyond the 40% to 50% of Democrats typically naming her as their top choice for the nomination. Eighty-two percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners have a favorable view of the former first lady, while only 16% have an unfavorable view of her.

Democrats also rate Clinton as the candidate most likely to defeat the Republican in the general election -- a key perceptual advantage given that primary voters are trying to distinguish among candidates with largely similar issue positions.

Clinton’s Image Strong on Top Policy Issues

According to the Sept. 24-27, 2007, Gallup Panel survey, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents choose Clinton as the candidate best able to handle a wide variety of national issues.

Clinton is preferred by a solid plurality of Democrats on an additional seven issues. Among these are terrorism and the situation in Iraq -- two of the most hotly debated issues of the election, as well as potentially crucial to voters. She also holds sizable leads on taxes and energy, and somewhat smaller leads on crime, immigration, and being commander in chief of the military."

June 01, 2015 10:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Hillary hasn't even announced yet"

Neither have Bush, Walker, Christie, Perry, Jindal, or Kasich.

It doesn't matter what happened to Hillary in 2008. Unlike 2008, Obama isn't running this time.

June 02, 2015 10:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Neither have Bush, Walker, Christie, Perry, Jindal, or Kasich."

so what? no one is saying they're a lock. there's a rich history of candidates with name recognition looking great in polls until they actually run. ever hear of Ross Perot?

"It doesn't matter what happened to Hillary in 2008. Unlike 2008, Obama isn't running this time."

what matters is that perception, at this point in time, is meaningless.

this is especially true for Hillary, an empress with no clothes. she has no particular vision, is not an inspiring speaker, had no accomplishments in the Senate and has screwed the world up with her work at State Dept (although, in fairness, she was implementing Obama's naïve agenda). her work on national health during Bill's term was a disaster, leading to the Gingrich revolution that dominated the rest of Bill's term. she refuses to answer questions. she criminally violated the Sarbanes-Oxley act by destroying e-mails subject to a Congressional inquiry, her Foundation accepted money from foreign governments while negotiating with them, and she has an attitude she doesn't have to follow the law.

even King John signed the Magna Carta. the American people aren't going to let Hillary revoke it

June 02, 2015 12:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Caitlyn Jenner has some tricky day-to-day changes in store, including where she eats, drinks and changes clothes ... at the country club which has become his home away from home.

Bruce Jenner became a member of Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, CA 15 years ago. He golfed there almost every day and established close relationships with his golfing buddies, including Wayne Gretzky. It's a very exclusive, ritzy club with an initiation cost set at $225,000.

But now that Bruce is Caitlyn, there's a new set of rules that segregate her from the male members.

For starters, the main dining room and bar are male only. They're actually attached to the men's locker room and women are not allowed. The women's restaurant is way more scaled down ... in other words, not nearly as nice.

Our Sherwood sources say the board will enforce the rules, which means the camaraderie Bruce shared with the other members will be greatly impeded now that he's Caitlyn


June 02, 2015 1:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to dominate the Democratic nomination contest. But her personal attributes continue to erode in the wake of stories about fundraising practices at the Clinton Foundation and her use of a personal e-mail server while at the State Department.

Clinton’s favorability ratings are the lowest in a Post-ABC poll since April 2008, when she was running for president the first time. Today, 41 percent of Americans say she is honest and trustworthy, compared with 52 percent who say she is not — a 22-point swing in the past year.

June 02, 2015 1:48 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Major study finds kids raised by same sex couples are "Happier and Healthier"

It’s the rallying cry for opponents of same-sex marriage: “Every child deserves a mom or a dad.” But a major new study finds that kids raised by same-sex couples actually do a bit better “than the general population on measures of general health and family cohesion.”

The study, conducted in Australia by University of Melbourne researchers “surveyed 315 same-sex parents and 500 children.” The children in the study scored about six percent higher than Australian kids in the general population. The advantages held up “when controlling for a number sociodemographic factors such as parent education and household income.” The study was the largest of its kind in the world.

The lead researcher, Dr. Simon Crouch, noted that in same-sex couples parents have to “take on roles that are suited to their skill sets rather than falling into those gender stereotypes.” According to Crouch, this leads to a “more harmonious family unit and therefore feeding on to better health and well being.”

The findings were in line with “existing international research undertaken with smaller sample sizes.”

Family Voice Australia, a group that opposes same-sex marriage, said the study should be discounted because it does not consider “what happens when the child reaches adulthood.”

In the United States, opponents of same-sex marriage routinely claim that children raised by same-sex couple fare worse. The most commonly cited study, conducted by sociologist Mark Regnerus, did not actually study children raised by same-sex couples. Indeed, “most of the subjects in the study grew up in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, long before marriage equality was available or adoption rights were codified in many states”. Instead, Regnerus studied children raised in “failed heterosexual unions” where one parent had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex.” It has been condemned by the American Sociological Association. Other frequently cited studies have similar methodological problems.

June 02, 2015 2:20 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

I posted "Yes, of course, because if society doesn't allow people to oppress gays"


Wyatt/bad anonymous replied "homosexuality is an idea and a behavior".

You're well aware that's not true, you're well aware that gayness is a same sex attraction just as heterosexuality is a same sex attraction. Give up on your tired old lies alaready - you don't even believe them yourself.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "by characterizing any disagreement with this idea or behavior as oppression, the gay agenda is doing what is has been doing in some many other ways: degrading our civilization".

"Disagreeing with" harmless characteristics is a wrondoing and is to be discouraged by society.



Wyatt/bad aonymous said "homosexuals have every right every other citizen has under the Constitution".

Yes, the constitution does give gays the right to marry the partner of their choosing. But of course you don't mean that, you falsely claim denying gays the right to a same sex marriage is equality - obviously not:

If Alice has the right to marry Tom then George must have the same right as Alice to marry Tom or that is sex discrimination - case closed.

June 02, 2015 2:34 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "as the article above aptly explained, guarantee of esteem and social acceptability is not a right".

I never said it was. Blacks don't have a right to esteem or social acceptability either, but its in society's best interests to willingly give both to blacks and gays.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the gay agenda has now taken the evil position that society is not tolerant unless anyone who believes homosexuality is wrong is hunted down and forced to recant".

A bald faced lie.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "and failure to bake a cake is akin to serial killing in Priya's world of evil wonders".

A desperate lie on your part. I never said any such thing.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "of course, conflating a personal preference with a racial identity is among the travesties of the gay agenda".

Nonsense. Both gayness and black skin are harmless characteristics only a bigot would dislike. Gays deserve equal rights for the same reason black people do.

June 02, 2015 2:35 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad aonymous said "the article above, you will see that the author is not an "anti-gay bigot"

Of course he is. He insists on characterizing a harmless characteristic as undesirable or a wrongdoing - he's just as much a bigot as you are.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "which is, again, a program to, by governmental enforcement, impose the moral views of the homosexual community on our society and to require allegiance to it as a price for participation in our society right?".

Nonsense. If people want to believe gayness and gay marriage are wrondoings they are free to believe so and avoid entering into a same sex relationship or same sex marriage. What they do not have the right to do is to force their beliefs on others by denying them the right to same sex relationships or same sex marriages.

June 02, 2015 2:35 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt, why do you even attempt to argue this issue with me anymore? It always ends the same way with me demonstrating clearly, concisely and irrefutably that you're wrong and a bigot.

There is no valid case to be made against gayness or same sex marriage - you've proved that over and over and over.

June 02, 2015 2:37 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Clinton’s favorability ratings are the lowest in a Post-ABC poll since April 2008, when she was running for president the first time. Today, 41 percent of Americans say she is honest and trustworthy, compared with 52 percent who say she is not — a 22-point swing in the past year".

Misleading and dishonest.

While Hillary's rating on honestness and trustworthyness are low, her ratings on other favourability factors such as "would make a good president" are considerably higher than any of her Republican challengers. Hillary still comes out significantly ahead on all theoretical matchups with Republican contenders.

But of course predicting who will win in 2016 is a fools errand at this point in the game as a great deal can happen between now and then, so I'll leave it up to Wyatt the fool to make predictions now about whose going to win then.

June 02, 2015 2:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt there's a reason why public opinion polls on gay marraige have shifted radically over the past 15 or 20 years going from most Americans being opposed to gay marriage with now over 60% in favour. The tired old arguments you're making have been heard and countered and they just don't hold up to scrutiny and logic over the long run when we're discussing fairness. All your tired old arguments have been heard for a long time and the public is massively rejecting them.

June 02, 2015 3:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"the Gingrich revolution that dominated the rest of Bill's term..."

...is a figment of your imagination.

Gingrich's revolution ended in 1998 but Clinton was President until January 2001.

Here's how wikipedia put it:

In 1998 Republicans lost five seats in the House—the worst midterm performance in 64 years by a party not holding the presidency. Gingrich, who won his reelection, was held largely responsible for Republican losses in the House. His private polls had given his fellow Republican Congressmen a false impression that pushing the Lewinsky scandal would damage Clinton's popularity and result in the party winning a net total of six to thirty seats in the US House of Representatives in this election.[86] The day after the election, a Republican caucus ready to rebel against him prompted his resignation of the speakership. He also announced his intended and eventual full departure from the House in January 1999.[87] When relinquishing the speakership, Gingrich said he was "not willing to preside over people who are cannibals," and claimed that leaving the House would keep him from overshadowing his successor.[87]"

And here's how Barney Frank put it this week:

"Dennis Hastert was a member of the House who voted for the Defense of Marriage act. He subsequently as Speaker twice put before the House of Representatives the constitutional amendment that would have cancelled retroactively all the same sex marriages that had taken place legally. ... The rank hypocrisy of this man using his power to persecute other people for doing what he was doing. Secondly, and it is relevant to note that in terms of the hypocrisy area, you mentioned Gingrich had to quit. It turns out Gingrich was at the time having an affair with the woman he is now married who was an employee of the House Agriculture Committee. And then Livingston who was supposed to replace him had to quit because he was having an affair not just with a woman but with a lobbyist who was lobbying him. So then in an effort to get somebody [who was clean], they get Hastert. The point is that all this was happening while they were impeaching Bill Clinton for having oral sex. So I think that it now looks like if you take Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, and Robert Livingston, the Republican Speakers or would be speakers, Clinton is a choir boy."

And Hillary is his long suffering wife.

"...Witness the new Washington Post poll, which shows Clinton remains popular and would of course be a strong contender to keep the presidency in Democratic hands.

What it also shows, though, is that her candidacy could split the genders in a way we haven't seen in decades -- at the very least.

It's a given in politics today that men will vote more Republican, while women will vote more Democratic. That has consistently been the case for a long, long time. But with Clinton at the top of the ticket, that pronounced split could turn into a chasm.

The Post poll shows that women say they would support Clinton by a striking 61-33 percent. Men, though, say they would back her by a far smaller count of 49-46 percent -- within the margin of error. That's a 25-point gap between Clinton's margin among women and among men..."

June 02, 2015 6:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...


anonymous said

"homosexuality is an idea and a behavior"

lazy Priya said:

"You're well aware that's not true, you're well aware that gayness is a same sex attraction just as heterosexuality is a same sex attraction. Give up on your tired old lies alaready - you don't even believe them yourself."

Priya, you sad couch potato, homosexuality is simply a concept, made up in the 19th century, that certain people are exclusively attracted to the same gender

the truth is that this psychological component is widespread; same gender attraction is experienced at some point by many people - and not indulged by most

the people our current society calls "homosexuals" are people who have indulged this tendency as a method to adjust to some other stress in their life and chosen to engage in homosexual behavior

it's an inconvenient truth for the gay agenda: there is no minority of people who are "made that way"

there are simply people who have chosen this path

btw, nice new riff on the spelling of already

anonymous said

"by characterizing any disagreement with this idea or behavior as oppression, the gay agenda is doing what is has been doing in some many other ways: degrading our civilization"

evil Priya said:

"Disagreeing with" harmless characteristics is a wrondoing and is to be discouraged by society"

actually, in all true civilizations, what behavior is harmless to society is a legitimate topic of discourse

hard as it is for you to imagine, there are people who disagree with you

whether you agree or not, freedom of speech is guaranteed in America

currently, the left is trying to destroy freedom of speech in the way communist countries have always done

first, they are trying to subvert democracy, which is the culture of persuasion by which allocate power, by advocating government regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political speech

you will note that Hillary recently became the first major presidential candidate in history to advocate amending the Bill of Rights

this an attempt to invalidate the Citizens United case, where the Supreme Court said the government couldn't forbid TV networks from airing a documentary critical of Hillary just because she is running for something

second, they try to attack capitalism, in which markets register the freely expressed choices of our citizens as a way to allocate wealth

and, finally, leftists are attacking science, which is how we decide what is empirically true

remember, when these types say the science on this or that is "settled", they aren't supporting science. they are saying science no longer has any business in this or that.

"wrongdoing"

you should making hillbilly ash trays for souvenir gift shops in the Ozarks

June 02, 2015 10:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

anonymous said

"homosexuals have every right every other citizen has under the Constitution"

stupid Priya said

"Yes, the constitution does give gays the right to marry the partner of their choosing"

no, it doesn't

"If Alice has the right to marry Tom then George must have the same right as Alice to marry Tom or that is sex discrimination - case closed"

well, Alice doesn't have the "right" to marry Tom

she may participate in a government sanctioned marriage if she meets the criteria to do so, as defined by the state

she can get a church sanctioned marriage if she meets the criteria to do so, as defined by the church

when you're asking some entity's endorsement, you abide by that entity's rules

there are no rights involved

June 02, 2015 11:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"why do you even attempt to argue this issue with me anymore? It always ends the same way with me demonstrating clearly, concisely and irrefutably that you're wrong and a bigot"

don't think Priya even understands what the anonymi are saying, much less demonstrating any of it is wrong

"There is no valid case to be made against gayness or same sex marriage - you've proved that over and over and over"

we've actually been discussing free speech but, since you bring it up, both "gayness" and same sex "marriage" are fictions

anonymous said

"Clinton’s favorability ratings are the lowest in a Post-ABC poll since April 2008, when she was running for president the first time. Today, 41 percent of Americans say she is honest and trustworthy, compared with 52 percent who say she is not — a 22-point swing in the past year".

idiotic Priya said:

"Misleading and dishonest"

how so?

"While Hillary's rating on honestness and trustworthyness are low, her ratings on other favourability factors such as "would make a good president" are considerably higher than any of her Republican challengers. Hillary still comes out significantly ahead on all theoretical matchups with Republican contenders"

well, that will change when the election campaign begins

Hillary is avoiding questions for good reason:

she can't handle them

whoever she winds up debating, it will become obvious she won't be a good President

"there's a reason why public opinion polls on gay marraige have shifted radically over the past 15 or 20 years" going from most Americans being opposed to gay marriage with now over 60% in favour. The tired old arguments you're making have been heard and countered and they just don't hold up to scrutiny and logic over the long run when we're discussing fairness. All your tired old arguments have been heard for a long time and the public is massively rejecting them"

then why are gay advocates so afraid of public votes?

June 02, 2015 11:57 PM  
Anonymous boo-hoo said...

Kris Jenner wanted her opinion heard loud and clear during the Vanity Fair interview with Bruce Jenner. Kris joined Bruce during the interview to give her opinion on why the marriage ended.

Kris asked Bruce during the interview, “Why would you want to be married and have kids if this is what you wanted since you were a little boy? Why would you not explain this all to me?”

Kris told the magazine, “All I was doing was working very hard for my family, so that we could all have a wonderful future, and he was pissed off.”

“He was married to me and he wasn’t who he wanted to be, so he was miserable,” she continued. “At the end of my relationship with Bruce, he definitely had a lot of social anxiety… that was one of the reasons we were in a struggle at the end.”

Kris also told the mag that Bruce’s approach to their divorce was “the most passive-aggressive thing I think I’ve ever experienced.”

Bruce responded, “The first 15 years I felt Kris needed me more because I was the breadwinner. Then, really around the time of the show, when that hit and she was running the whole thing and getting credit for it and she had her own money, she didn’t need me as much from that standpoint.”

“I think in a lot of ways she became less tolerant of me,” Bruce continued. “A lot of times she wasn’t very nice. People would see how I got mistreated. She controlled the money, all that kind of stuff.”

June 03, 2015 12:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The myth that the GOP is a party of “Family Values” continues to crumble, with chronic scandals rocking the hypocritical conservative movement to its soulless, empty core.

The latest miscreant to slither out from the woodwork is former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), who was indicted for illegally paying hush money to a former student who he allegedly molested while a high school wrestling coach.

The Hastert situation isn’t unique. Notoriously homophobic Brooklyn Tea Bagger, Joseph Hayon, was taken to the hoosegow last week for sharing kiddie porn featuring children between the ages of 2 and 12. He unsuccessfully campaigned for office with the motto: “Our children are our future.”

Then there is the skullduggery of the Duggar family. Josh, a staff member of the conservative Family Research Council and the oldest son on the family’s TLC series “19 Children and Counting,” was exposed for having previously molested at least five little girls, several of whom were his sisters. Afraid that the truth might rock the TV gravy train, the family patriarch, Jim Bob Duggar, covered up the nauseating crime.

The website Queerty revealed that anti-gay Michigan preacher, Matthew Makela, had a profile on the gay dating app Grindr, where he described himself as a “top” who enjoys “cuddling.” This same conservative holy man, who was searching for dudes online, wrote on Nov. 2014:

“A sexual attraction to the same sex is a sinful temptation to be resisted and overcome by God’s grace and power, just as a temptation to steal or lie or overeat must be resisted and overcome by replacement with working hard, telling the truth and moderation in appetite.”

It seems that the good Rev. Makela succeeded at “working hard.”

June 03, 2015 12:53 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

In April, archconservative North Dakota lawmaker, Rep. Randy Boehning (R-Fargo), was caught trolling for gay sex on Grindr. He twice voted against a gay rights bill.

Clearly, the GOP’s theatrical Puritanism has always been a ruse and a shameless act skillfully used to attain power. The ongoing strategy is for greedy billionaires who want huge tax cuts to exploit divisive wedge issues to dupe gullible yahoos into voting Republican. These stooges giddily cast their ballots against gays and abortion, while illogically voting against their own economic interests. After the election, the gleeful sugar daddies from Big Oil, Big Coal, and the Pollution Lobby cash in, chuckling all the way to the “too big to fail” bank.

The end game is money in pockets, not morality from pulpits. Right wing politicians, almost all whom are rented by plutocrats, cynically manipulate “values voters,” while rarely practicing the strict religious rules that they preach.

June 03, 2015 12:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "btw, nice new riff on the spelling of already".

LOL, Wyatt can't make a rational argument against what I've said so he gets all jazzed over finding a typo and tries to pretend that's somehow a point in his favour.

And Wyatt, Alice most certainly DOES have the right to marry Tom, the U.S. supreme court rulled in loving vs virgina that marriage is one of the fundamental rights of man. Federal judges since then have said that the right to marry means nothing if it does not include the right to marry the partner of one's choosing.

The bill of rights applies to individuals, not groups of people, it is individuals that must be treated equally under the 14th amendment, not groups of people, so the claim that marriage inequality treats men and women the same in allowing them only to marry a person of the opposite sex is irrelevant. The court rejected that argument as well in loving vs virgina where your bigot ancestors argued that each race had the equal right to marry someone of their own race.

So, it necessarily follows that if Alice has the right to marry Tom (and she does) then George must have the same right she has to marry Tom, anything else is sex discrimination prohibited by the 14th amendment.

Case closed.

June 03, 2015 1:12 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home