Sunday, May 30, 2010

Bad news for “Hillary”phobes


"Every time I hear this song from "Wicked", says Susie Madrack in Crooks and Liars, "I picture Maureen Dowd lecturing Hillary Clinton about what she should do to be popular."

Dowd could save herself the trouble. Secretary of State Hillary ("Hillary") Clinton may not always be given the courtesy of a last name, but PollingReport.com reports that almost all the most recent opinion polls, conducted between October 2009 and March 2010, have given Secretary Clinton a "favorable" rating of 60% or better. These included CNN, P-GfK (conducted by TfK Roper Affairs & Media), CBS News, FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll and Gallup, with CBS reporting the highest favorable rating of 70%.


"The right wing will go after her, and the country can't take another eight years of that."

This makes Secretary Clinton the most popular living politician in the US who has held elected office.

In Open Left, Chris Bowers noted that "Hillary Clinton will turn 69 in the final week of the 2016 campaign, which [would make] her slightly younger than Ronald Reagan when he first was elected in 1980. Also, as Secretary of State, a maujor Presidential candidate, a US Senator and First Lady, she is also probably more credentialed than any other potential Presidential candidate, too. There is even talk [that] she may become the next Secretary of Defense, further adding to her credentials."

Quite the sea change from the "Hillary"-bashing fad of 2008. Madrack cites a number of objections to her White House aspirations raised by progressives during the primary season -- objections that now sound naive at best:

"She's a corporatist from the DLC wing of the party. (Hmmm, I'd call that one a wash, considering we elected the man who hired Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.)

"The right wing will go after her, and the country can't take another eight years of that." (This is the one that really makes me laugh. When will Democrats learn that it simply doesn't matter who we nominate? Anyone we support will get the same treatment.)

"We can't have Bill Clinton hanging around, getting into trouble."  (You mean, like when Rahm asked him to talk to Joe Sestak?)
Add to that, "she has not experience", obviously outdated now.

Read more at Crooks and Liars. And check out that "Wicked" video.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Postcards from the Drill Baby Drill Spill

National Geographic is following the unfolding catastrophe of the Drill Baby Drill Spill on the Gulf of Mexico.



Oil-Coated Cane -- Photograph by Gerald Herbert, AP


Oil sticks to cane, a type of plant found in Gulf of Mexico marshes, on the Mississippi River on Tuesday.

In addition to killing seabirds, the oil spill is likely harming other animals less visible to the public, John "Wes" Tunnell, associate director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, said by email in early May. Infauna, or small organisms such as clams and tubeworms that live in ocean sediments, are vital food sources for shorebirds and other coastal animals.

After the 1979 Ixtoc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the area's infauna were reduced by up to 90 percent, Tunnell said—a potential reason many bird species left the area in the wake of the nine-month-long spill.







 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Written in the Sand - Photograph by John Moore, Getty Images


Written by a Greenpeace activist, the letters BP—referring to the company that leased the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil rig—stand out against a pool of oil on a beach at the mouth of the Mississippi River on Monday.

Last week response workers placed an insertion tube inside the destroyed pipe connected to the 5,000-foot-deep (about 1,500-meter-deep) wellhead. About a thousand barrels a day of gas and oil from the leaking wellhead are now being brought to the surface via the tube and burned, according to the joint federal-industry task force charged with managing the spill.






 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dripping Oil - Photograph by Hans Deryk, Reuters


Oil drips from the rubber gloves of Greenpeace marine biologist Paul Horsman, who surveyed oil-coated shorelines near the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana this week. When oil gets trapped underground in coastal sediments, it can stay there for decades, according to Gregory Stone, director of Louisiana State University's Coastal Studies Unit. (See: "Gulf Oil Spill a 'Dead Zone in the Making'?")

For instance, on the Mississippi coast—where smaller oil spills have washed ashore in the past—researchers have found oil lingering as deep as 20 feet (about 6 meters), Stone said in early May.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Oil-clogged Marshes - Photograph by Hans Deryk, Reuters


Marine biologist Paul Horsman of Greenpeace tramps through oil-clogged marshes on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Louisiana on Monday. After weeks of staying mostly at sea, the Gulf oil spill is now washing up on the state's coasts—likely a devastating development, scientists say. (See pictures of ten animals at risk due to the Gulf oil spill.)

As the nurseries for much of the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico, coastal marshes are vital to the ecosystem and the U.S. seafood industry, according to Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall. It's much harder to remove the oil from coastal marshes, since some management techniques—such as controlled burns—are more challenging in those environments, Kendall said on May 12. "Once it gets in there," he said, "we're not getting it out."

Friday, May 21, 2010

Global warming debunker/homophobe booted from BP cleanup team

from Business Week:

"Jonathan I. Katz, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis., said he was fired from the team of scientists chosen by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to help BP Plc control the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“ 'Some of Professor Katz’s controversial writings have become a distraction from the critical work of addressing the oil spill,' Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said in an e-mail today. 'Professor Katz will no longer be involved in the department’s efforts.' ”

Some of Katz' writing inspired a petition effort to get him replaced on the team. In an essay titled "In Defense of Homophobia", Katz described homophobia as "a moral judgement upon acts engaged in by choice." Ironically, he follows this up with a statement of solidarity with those who are homophobic on the basis of religion -- also a 'choice': "if you are religious, you probably agree with the homophobic position, because most major religions make this moral judgement." Katz follows this up with a 'history' of AIDS:

the modern AIDS epidemic began suddenly about 1980. Its first victims were promiscuous homosexual males; it was initially called ``Gay-Related Immune Deficiency''.

In America attitudes towards homosexuality changed in the 1970's. It went from a private, furtively practiced, vice to an open and accepted subculture. In many circles, ``sodomite'' ceased to be an insult. This acceptance led to the toleration, and wide practice, of gross homosexual promiscuity. HIV, falling onto that fertile soil, made the AIDS epidemic. Even before AIDS was recognized, practicing homosexuals were notorious for a high rate of venereal diseases.

Katz does distinguish between "innocent" AIDS casualties and the "not so innocent" ones:

There are many completely innocent victims, too: hemophiliacs (a substantial fraction died as a result of contaminated clotting factor), recipients of contaminated transfusions, and their spouses and children, for AIDS can be transmitted heterosexually (in America, only infrequently) and congenitally. . . . Guilt for their deaths is on the hands of the homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers who poisoned the blood supply. These people died so the sodomites could feel good about themselves.
Jonathan "global warming is good for humanity" Katz

Ironically, the "expert" that Obama was planning to engage in addressing an environmental disaster thinks that the impact of human activities on climate change is no big deal:

Some of the more apocalyptic fears about global warming resemble a secular doomsday cult. Rather than God dooming mankind for its traditional sins (robbery, lust, murder, disbelief, etc.), Nature is said to doom mankind for the secular sin of carbon emission. Some (Greenpeace, and even more radical groups) think any human effect on nature to be sinful, and regard "Mother Earth" as a deity that is violated by any use of its resources for the sustenance, comfort or betterment of Mankind. Needless to say, this is opposite to the Biblical grant of the natural world to Man for his benefit.
 
Predictions of climate doom are no more rational than traditional religious predictions of a Day of Judgement or Armageddon. Divine revelation is not open to rational argument, and its truth can only be judged by further revelation.

Global warming is real and much of it is probably anthropogenic. Nothing serious will be done about it, no matter how frantic or hysterical certain people become. Fortunately, global warming is probably good for humanity. Sit back, relax, and watch it happen.
Not surprisingly, the conservative chatterers have already gone ballistic over this, tossing about references to "censorship", "free speech" and the First Amendment. It isn't certain how any of them would have reacted had the gays' "fierce advocate" in the White House hired a "proud white supremacist" or "proud anti-Semite". And, for that matter, whether an 'expert' who thinks that global warming, whether human-caused or otherwise, would be "good for humanity" would belong on this crew in particular.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Gary & Tony's Excellent Parenting Adventure

It's a month away but already there's considerable harrumphing on the Right about an upcoming CNN special, "Gary & Tony have a baby", with Newbusters complaining that "CNN only covers the 'LGBT' activists sympathetically and on their own terms."

CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien told Michael Jensen of AfterElton.com that "I was noticing at my daughter's school and in the places around the city, the number of male couples having children. I was interested and noticed a trend. Then I ran into a couple my producer knew well who were thinking of having a baby. I thought it would be very interesting to follow the process financially of finding a donor, and the emotional processes and psychological journey. In some ways, the most radical thing to do [for a gay couple] is to circle around and have a bigger family unit."




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Gary Spino and Tony Brown
 
Jensen: What more can you tell me about Gary and Tony?

O'Brien: They've been together for twenty years. They are two guys who have described themselves by saying they grew up when they found each other and they transitioned from young men to grownups together. Their marriage was in Canada in 2005 and while they were happy with that, they eventually decided that they really wanted to have a baby. They loved each other so much that they decided the next natural step was to become a bigger family.

Jensen: What's the structure of the special?

O'Brien: We tell the story of how they come to this place. We go with them every step of the way as the implantation happens, as they are navigating all the drama that comes along with having a surrogate. There is a lot of legal maneuvering. By the time we meet them they have the egg donor and surrogate.


CNN reports reports that the show will air June 24 at 8 p.m. ET


Read more of the interview at AfterElton.com .

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Reformation continues with the Episcopal Church's second gay bishop

In September of 1979, at the Episcopal Church's General Convention in Denver, Colorado, the church's Bishop of Rochester gave the Standing Commission on Human Affairs and Health a resolution stating that "there should be no barrier to the ordination of those homosexual persons who are able and willing to conform their behavior tothat which the Church affirms as wholecome. . . . The General Convention should enact no legislation which singles out a particular human condition and makes it an absolute barrier to ordination." 

Mary Glasspool, then a student, was among the attendees asked to give a short witness statement.  "Shaking in my pulpit pumps", as she recalls, she told the audience of 1,500 people that "I trust that God's Love at this convention will transcend the issues and address the people -- all of us -- in our wholeness. I trust and I pray that that same love will prevent any of us from condemning others -- particularly in this case, homosexuals, in our human, and full, and loving wholeness."

Afterwards her bishop, Paul Moore, Jr., "came over to me, gave me a great big hug, and said: 'Now that you've come out to 1,500 people, don't you think it's almost time to tell your parents?"



Rev. Canon mary Glasspool (bottom left), Rev. Canon Diane M. Jardine Bruce (right) and Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori (top left)

Thirty years later, the now Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool was ordained as the Episcopal Church's second openly gay bishop.  Needless to say, this didn't happen without considerable protest, both from within and without the United States.

The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on

During the heyday of the Reformation, swords would clash and heretics would burn; and the tradition continues as best it can. Last month Archbishop Ian Earnest of the Anglican Province of the Indian Ocean , disturbed by what he dubbed "theological innovations", announced that his conscience dictated that he "suspend all communication both verbal and sacramental" with the US-based Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, "until such time as they reverse" these innovations. Archbishop Earnest made exceptions for "those bishops and clergy who have distanced themselves" from the churches' direction. Only a few days before Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda, whose country's consideration of sexual orientation cleansing has made the news in past months, wrote to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams characterizing the North American churches as "gross violators of biblical truth" who were "promoting revisionist theology." 

In March, a Church of England group describing themselves as "open evangelicals" issued a statement condemning Glasspool's ordination.



The 3,000 people present at Rev. Glasspool's ordination included two male protesters,  who were led out by security guards.


The 3-legged stool

As has been the case since the Reformation, however, questions about Protestant churches' "directions' have cycled regularly, as have the subsequent semi-clonings generally referred to as 'schisms.'  However, in a profile provided by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Rev. Glasspool reaffirmed a commitment to the church's most characteristic approach to ministry. "We hold that the three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition and Reason (which includes experience) is an appropriate way in which to descern God's Will. But we can be hampered by the disadvantages of the colonialism that is part of our history, institutional structures that change too slowly and a lack of the freedom that faith brings in response to fear."

Glasspool's involvement with the Episcopal Church has been lifelong. Her father, Rector of St. James Chapel in Goshen, New York, had opposed ordaining women as priests although "I became something of an exeption to the rule" for him. 

She met her life partner of two decades, Becki Sander, "as she was studying for a dual degree in theology and social work.  We have been together since 1988, and Becki has just earned her Ph.D. in Social Work, having written an excellent thesis on Restorative Justice.

"God has blessed us richly and continues to do so."