Republicans want a moderate; the people want change

July 15, 2019 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments
Migrants are gathered inside the fence of a makeshift detention center in El Paso, Texas in March. (Photo by Sergio Flores for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

We’ve seen a number of writings by Republicans lately urging Democrats to run another “moderate.”

Here’s why we need to ignore them:

Moderate Republicans want to make the Democratic party their own because they can’t bring themselves vote for a fascist. That’s a good thing, but not for Democrats.

If we put up another moderate, we’ll get the same result: another loss. That’s because most Americans know we need real change and we need it now, not in another four or eight years. Young adults won’t vote for another moderate, and a lot of traditional Democrats won’t, either, so please stop telling me I’m dooming us because I refuse to pledge to “vote blue, no matter who.” That little bumper-sticker slogan was probably coined by a “moderate.”

Eighty-three percent of Americans want Medicare for all. Eighty-three percent. But none of the moderates will pursue that.

Our planet is suffering irreversible damage because of climate change. If we don’t so something drastic in the next decade, we face extinction because we can’t breathe methane, and methane levels are increasing at an alarming rate. A moderate won’t do anything radical because he or she is owned, or at least partly owned by fossil fuel interests.

Minimum wage NEEDS to be $15 or more an hour. A moderate won’t do that because his or her corporate overlords will forbid it.

We have a humanitarian crisis at our border, which is nothing more than a ramping up of existing policies put in place by a moderate. Yes, Obama was a moderate, and he deported more people than anyone before him. Obama created the camps, although they were nothing like what they have become. Still, I doubt a moderate will close them. Remember how Obama promised to close Gitmo? It’s still there.

As a result of this policy, human beings now are being rounded up and placed in conditions that we wouldn’t allow for animals. How long before we start killing some to make room for more?

We have a criminal thug in the Oval Office and the moderates in Congress do nothing to stop him.

The people offering this advice are REPUBLICANS looking out for their own interest, not ours. Where are your critical thinking skills, people? These are not “hard left” positions. These are mainstream positions, and we will not win back the Senate or the White House by embracing them.

We can’t endure another four years of fascist rule. The Republicans in the Senate have pushed through hundreds of right-wing judges, and another loss could corrupt our courts beyond repair.

Our deficit is rising precipitously and we can’t endure that for another four years.

Our air and water are dirtier than they’ve been in many decades.

Worst of all, we have lost our leadership position and any moral authority in the world.

A moderate won’t fix any of this. The attempt to get Democrats to run another moderate is nothing more than the 1 percent looking out for its own interests.

They’re scared because of the popularity of the true Democrats. Look at the party platform from 1976 and you’ll see the traditional values of the Democratic Party. You’ll also see they’re the same values being embraced by what Republicans are calling the “left wing” of the party, and by the majority of the American people.

Don’t fall for the lies of the Republicans and the oligarchy. Insist on a real Democrat to oppose the current administration and you’ll ensure a victory in 2020.

My vote is reserved for someone who will fix health care

March 19, 2019 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Mike being Mike. His main mission in life was to amuse himself and others. He was a proud jackass and I still believe he chose to leave us on April Fool’s Day.

Eleven years ago today, hospice came.

Mike had slept in the bed in the spare bedroom that first night here, but the nurse said he’d be more comfortable in a hospital bed, and she had one here in a couple of hours. She was right. You could see it on his face as soon as he settled in, raised the top and picked up his game console controls.

Part of the visit was an intake interview.

“Do you use tobacco?”

“Yup and I’m not quitting now.”

“Do you use drugs or alcohol?”

“Not for the last 11 and a half years.”

“Good for you! What was your drug of choice?”

Mike leaned closer, his eyes sparkling. “Whadaya got?”

He got the reaction he wanted, a shocked look.

“I was whatcha call a garbage head,” he said, smiling. “I would do anything that altered my brain in any way.”

Mike had sobered up on Nov. 9, 1996, and he had worked with 12-step groups in New York, Savannah and Raleigh. He often went to beginner meetings because he knew people new to sobriety needed help.

“As soon as you smelled fryer oil, you knew the meeting was going to be a good one,” a friend of his told me. “He would come right from work, and he was so wise, so compassionate. You just knew if he was there, something good was going to happen.”

Anyone who needed to talk knew they could call Mike and he’d listen. No matter what time of day it was, no matter how much he had going on, he always made time for someone who needed to talk.

I was feeling pretty smug because I believed I would die when he did. Yes, I know there’s nothing logical about it, nothing even remotely logical. But I had somehow convinced myself that I wouldn’t have to go on without him. And yes, I had another son, two fabulous daughters-in-law, a loving husband, four grandchildren and sisters and friends. That didn’t matter to me.

Mike was born on my birthday, and he and I were so alike, we often didn’t need to talk, although we always did. He had my sense of humor and my passion for justice.

We had long, rambling conversations about everything imaginable, although he could lose me in the weeds when he got into philosophy.

And he was particularly delighted when he could combine philosophy and wise-assery. He knew every word to Monty Python’s Philosopher’s Song, not to mention “Every Sperm is Precious,” and “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” He could recite huge swaths of dialogue from Monty Python and Mel Brooks movies. In fact, he and his wife’s stepfather used to put on German helmets from Bob’s extensive military artifacts collection and sing, “Springtime for Hitler,” from “The Producers.” They invited me to sing along, but I just couldn’t bring myself to put on a German helmet and join in. It was too much fun watching them.

Mike was a foodie who loved working in restaurants except for the lack of health insurance. He went back to school because he knew he needed another career, and he had chosen law. He was planning to be a legal aid attorney, and he would have been a damn good one.

But our broken health care system derailed his plans. It shouldn’t have. We have dozens of models for a just health care system from every other industrialized country in the world. But corporations have more power than people do in this country. They have co-opted our democracy to suit their needs, and they have used every immoral method in their playbook to maintain a stranglehold on progress of any kind.

The Affordable Care Act would have gotten my son the insurance he needed, although it might not have covered annual colonoscopies because the insurance companies have maintained control, with the full cooperation of both corporate-owned political parties.

Somewhere near a half million people have died in these last 11 years. I think that’s enough already.

Condemn me all you want for my hard-ass stand, but I will not vote for anyone who won’t support the Medicare for All bill that would have everyone covered within three years. That’s my line in the sand.

This is a national emergency and it’s long past time we treat it as such.

If the creature currently squatting in the White House steals another election because the Democrats won’t give us a viable alternative, then we as a nation get what we deserve. I will not accept any blame. I played along once and the DNC rigged the primaries to get their flawed candidate on the ballot. I dutifully voted for her.

I bought into your “anything is better than that clown” line in 2016. Now, considering that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome, I would say anyone who falls for that again is the fool, not those of us who refuse to do so.

Some 70 percent of voters want this. Even 52 percent of Republicans are on board. This is not an unreasonable demand and I will not back down again. You will fix this, Democrats, or you will go down with the Republicans and it won’t be pretty.

I have had to live these last 11 years without my precious son. I miss him every moment of every day and the pain I feel constantly won’t let up until I join him.

There are a half million people who have landed in this boat with me since my son died. It’s time for action.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Profit before people’ is fascism, and fascism killed my son

March 18, 2019 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Me and Mike on his wedding day.

Eleven years ago today, I brought my son home to die.

I can’t describe to you how that feels. Unless you have lived it, you can’t even begin to know.

It was the end of hope, if you can imagine that.

Early that morning, my son and I sat in his living room. I had a cup of coffee, he had finished his. He looked so thin, so frail, but I still hoped we might have a few months, a road trip to the Northeast, just a little time.

“I’m ready for this to be over, Mom,” he said.

He had fought like hell for three years — the first year of that fight devoted to having someone who could help him take notice of his plight. In Savannah, at Memorial Health System, he had been ignored — at one time, spending 11 days in a hospital room not being seen by a single doctor because they had written him off as not profitable enough to deserve to live. They even neglected to treat a life-threatening infection that developed in his surgical wound.

We had gotten him a consultation with Dr. Herb Hurwitz at Duke University Medical Center, and Hurwitz had adopted him. Hurwitz and his team fought like hell for my son, but it was too late already by the time we got to them.

Two weeks ago, Mike had been told he needed to gain two pounds. I had gone to the Duke Chapel that afternoon to beg for those two pounds. I just wanted more time. I wasn’t ready to let go of hope. In hindsight, I wasn’t ever going to be ready to let go of him.

We got to the clinic and Mike slipped off his leather coat and stepped on the scale. He had lost a pound. This was it. It was over.

I’ll never forget the look on his face when he said, “I tried!” If only I could forget that moment. If only I could erase the image.

Dr. Hurwitz’s eyes filled with tears as he said, “You’re a good person, Mike. You don’t deserve what’s happening to you.”

I have since found that most Republicans are cautious with their sympathy. They want to know whether he was working when he got sick, as though unemployment deserves the death penalty.

When I call them out on it, they insist, “some people just want a handout.”

First of all, nobody “just wants a handout.” People want the dignity of access to lifesaving care.

Secondly, health care is not ever a handout. It is a basic human right, and we have a word for people who would deny others a basic human right that they, themselves, have. We call them fascists.

If you think my son deserved to die because insurance companies wouldn’t cover him and doctors at Memorial Health System in Savannah, Ga., wouldn’t care for him, you are a fascist in my book. “Profit before people” is about the shortest accurate definition of fascism there is.

I think that moment when we realized there was nothing more we could do was when I became convinced that my heart would stop when his did. I couldn’t picture life without him, so I would go with him.

As we were headed back to the parking garage, Mike turned around in his wheelchair and said, “What do you think I have, Mom? Two weeks?”

“God, I hope it’s more than that,” I said.

It wasn’t. In two weeks to the day, he would die. His heart would stop and mine would keep beating.

If you think I sound pissed as I watch the Democratic Party try to prepare me to accept another “centrist” candidate for president, another 1960s-era Republican who doesn’t care how many people die as long as the economy is growing, you’re right. I am.

You can curse me all you want for refusing to play that game any longer. Somewhere near a half million people have died the same way my son did in these last 11 years.

I do what I do so your child won’t die the way mine did.

I have every right to withhold my vote from people who don’t care enough about these human lives to fight for them.

In fact, I expect the same commitment from everyone who knows we need a universal health care system NOW. Not in another 11 years, but within two.

Believe me, I’d rather be with my son than be battling this kind of ignorance here now.

DO NOT try to convince me to vote for another right-winger for president. The creature currently squatting in the White House is not my fault. I voted for your “centrist” in 2016. You didn’t learn from that defeat. You will not get my vote again unless you put up an acceptable candidate.

Eleven years ago today, I learned what it was to lose all hope. We would have exactly two weeks left with my son.

 

 

Don’t blame me if you put up a candidate I can’t vote for

March 16, 2019 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Until Beto says he will support Medicare for All, he will not get my support. Neither will any other candidate. Not in the primary and not in the general election.

Beto O’Rourke hasn’t said he supports Medicare for All.

Beto O’Rourke won’t get my vote unless he does.

John Hickenlooper said he doesn’t think health care for everyone should be a “litmus test for Democrats.”

John Hickenlooper won’t get my vote.

Jay Inslee has said, “Right now we need to embrace the things that we can have to move toward universal health coverage.”

Jay Inslee won’t get my vote.

Others have said we should “move toward” a single-payer system.

Even those who are willing to improve and expand Medicare want us to take our time getting there.

Unless “move toward” means everyone is covered within two years of your inauguration, you won’t get my vote.

I’m serious about this, and I will not move one bit on it.

A public option is no longer enough. People are dying every damn day while we dither on how we might move forward, while at the same time never moving forward.

It has been nine years since the Affordable Care Act passed. It did get 15 million more people insurance, but those numbers are falling since the current administration decided to sabotage the law, and even having insurance insures little more than the insurance companies’ profit.

How does a person making $10 an hour afford employer-sponsored insurance (which makes the person ineligible to buy affordable insurance through the Marketplace) that costs $700 a month and has a $6,000 deductible?

As one friend said to me last year, “I’d have to take out a $6,000 loan to get sick and that’s before all the co-pays.”

So, we still have about 33 million uninsured in the US, and millions more whose insurance gives them little or no access to health care. If it’s not deductibles and co-pays, it’s in- or out-of network, it’s denial outright denial of claims that the insurance company should pay for, but will deny if it can get away with it. It’s denial of a lifesaving drug because the policy’s formulary is so limited.

Insurance companies are still in charge and we must put an end to that.

And nearly all the Democrats are saying they won’t support an immediate move to Medicare for all. They don’t want to hurt Big Insurance by making it do what it’s supposed to, and they don’t want to get rid of the robber barons who run the for-profit insurance companies. Republicans think everything is fine, so we’re not even going to talk about them here.

Eleven years ago today, I was heading to Cary, where my son lived, so I could take him to his Tuesday chemo appointment. I still had hope we might have a few months left with him, that we might take a road trip during the summer so he could see friends and family in the Northeast one last time.

Mike had been sentenced to death, not because he had committed any crime, but because a birth defect was a pre-existing condition and the poor, struggling insurance companies likely wouldn’t make a profit off of him. So he was condemned to a slow, torturous death.

Doctors had been allowed to turn him away because he couldn’t pay.  The emergency room had met its legal obligation by giving him a laxative instead of looking for the malignant tumor that was blocking his colon.

Medicaid had been allowed to deny him access to care unless he separated from his beloved wife, and the Social Security Administration was allowed to take 36 months to approve his claim. The letter came 11 years ago March 10 — 36 months after he applied following a Stage 3 cancer diagnosis. His first check would come nine days after he died.

But Medicaid — once it had broken up his marriage — paid the drug companies, so they got their profit. The total cost of his chemo alone was about $600,000. The ostomy supply people got paid thousands of dollars over that 36 months, while the only help my son was offered was $10 a month in food stamps. He turned it down.

This is what life looks like for somebody who needs access to health care. This is what death looks like for someone who is denied that access.

People who own homes and have savings are reduced to the poverty in which my son was forced to exist. Most cancer patients go through their entire life’s savings in two years, leaving their families destitute, whether or not they survive.

Medical expenses account for two-thirds of bankruptcies in this nation. You can not be prepared for this unless you’re immensely wealthy, and every one of these Democratic candidates can put together millions of dollars, so they have no idea what it’s like for the rest of us.

I have taken a lot of heat for saying that I will not vote for a person who won’t support an immediate move to single-payer. But scream at me all you like, I will not support anyone who won’t work on fixing this first thing.

I have been patient. But close to a half million people have died since my son did. Jesus, people, how many more will it take before you get it?

Does it have to be your child before you see the scale of this disaster?

No one — I repeat, no one — will get my vote without a promise to make this (and climate change and living wages) a top priority. I can not be mollified with any promises except this one: “I will move on Day 1 to change this health care system to one that will care for everyone. I will not abandon this until we have a system in place.”

If you won’t make that promise, you can’t have my vote. Not in the primaries and not in the general election.

To the DNC: If you force another 1960s-era Republican on me, you will lose my vote. I will not be a good girl and get in line again. It’s up to you to make sure we get a candidate who will work on what 70 percent of voters overall — and 52 percent of Republican voters — want.

I know I’m not alone in this, and if enough of us come out and say we will blame the DNC if we get another “centrist” who won’t act on health care, living wages, voting rights, climate change and the war economy, perhaps the DNC will quit trying to block the candidates who will give us what we want.

If it means another four years of the current administration, it’s your fault, not mine. I am done being nice.

Eleven years ago today, I was packing the car to head out to my son’s. I had no idea that we had just 17 days left with him. I couldn’t imagine life without him, so I began to believe my heart would stop when his did. Part of me still wishes it had.

I wouldn’t wish the pain my family and I have endured on anyone, and for that reason, I will oppose any candidate who won’t promise to make a real solution to this mess a top priority. And a real solution means results within two years. I think that’s perfectly reasonable.

I can’t get my son back, but I can work so no more mothers lose their children the way I lost mine.

If you think you can change my mind, think again. I will not be placated by anything short of universal, affordable access to quality care. The rest of the world has it, and we will too.

 

 

I am leaving the Democratic Party. Here’s why.

December 8, 2017 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center 2 comments

I am done.

I stayed when the Democrats refused to push for a single-payer health care system because they didn’t want to anger Republicans, who they knew would never go for it.

So they didn’t even try.

Instead, we got a system that was designed by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, and the Republicans weren’t even happy with that because they don’t care if people die.

I stayed when the Democrats refused to even look at the war crimes of the Bush Administration because they wanted to look forward, not back.

So the hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in a war for control of oil will go unpunished. The lies, the torture, the illegal prison in Guantanamo Bay will go unanswered.

I stayed when the Democrats manipulated the primary election system to nominate Hillary Clinton, a competent but terribly flawed candidate, simply because it was her turn. That manipulation allowed a malignant, sociopathic, narcissistic, sexual predator to take the White House, assisted by a foreign power.

I stayed when the Democrats didn’t fight harder for my right to control my own body because they didn’t want to offend the fascist “Christians” who want women to be forced to breed cannon fodder for their wars.

I stayed when Democrats refused to fight like hell for a living wage. When I wrote a resolution for an immediate hike to a $15-per-hour minimum wage, others in the party changed it to a desire for that to be phased in over five years.

If you’re making $7.25 an hour — about one-third of what it takes to live comfortably in this country — you need that money NOW, not in five years, when it won’t go nearly as far.

I stayed even though Democrats haven’t even talked about poverty or race in any campaign since — well, hell, I can’t even remember, although I wrote about my disgust in a column after the 1992 election.

I stayed through battle after battle for the soul of this nation where the Democrats refused to even show up.

And now they wonder why voters aren’t enthusiastic enough to vote. Wake up! It’s because no one is fighting for them.

I stayed because I hoped we as a party would demonstrate some sort of moral fortitude and was disappointed again and again.

I stayed as Republicans played their game of making us demonstrate our “morality” while they played dirty tricks and tolerated — even defended — inexcusable lapses in morality by members of their own party.

I stayed even though the Democrats didn’t even call out the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Republicans.

The push for Al Franken to resign was my last straw.

I say this as a woman who has survived countless episodes of sexual violence starting when I was 3 years old.

This was not about sexual improprieties, damn it, it was about manipulating us into getting rid of one of the most effective fighters we have in the Senate. This was a witch hunt designed to co-opt and pervert the #MeToo Movement.

They got what they wanted, and they will seat Roy Moore, who has more than a dozen women testifying he made inappropriate advances toward them while they were still children and he was in his 30s. And they will not investigate the charges against him because they have no conscience and no shame.

And Democrats played right into their hands.

Why couldn’t we have said Franken would be pressured to leave when and if Moore went away?

Why couldn’t we have waited for the investigation Franken himself called for?

The Democratic Party has not fought for anyone but Wall Street since the 1990s. The party has not tried to fix a horribly broken justice system. It has not done anything to stop the slaughter of young men and women of color by a militarized police. It has, in fact, promoted the militarization of police.

The party did not stand up against Bush’s illegal war in Iraq. Its members actually voted to send our people into harm’s way based on lies. And then, when the lies were revealed, it did nothing to rectify the situation.

The party is in the lap of Wall Street. Its policies further the economic inequalities that plague our nation and the world, since it leads the effort to spread the policies of Wall Street around the world.

It has not stood up for me or what I believe in for decades.

Yes, there are differences between the two parties, but not enough to keep me engaged with the Democratic Party. I have resigned my position as an assistant precinct chair.

Last summer my son left the Republican Party for its lack of morality.

Today I do the same as I depart from the Democratic party.

I will fight for the soul of this nation as an unaffiliated voter because the party I supported, both with my vote and with my checkbook, has become as corrupt as the people it claims to oppose.

 

Representing, unlike my representative, and refusing to back down

August 7, 2017 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Mark Meadows exemplifies everything that’s wrong with America right now.

 

I wasn’t going to go to the Mark Meadows town hall tonight.

There’s nothing he can say to convince me he’s right, and he won’t let me speak to him.

At the last town hall I went to, questions had to be written out, and we were told they would be asked in the order they were submitted. I was the second person through the door and I submitted the second question. But mine was not among the eight questions asked.

I approached Meadows afterward to ask why that had happened, but he took one look at me when I stuck out my hand to introduce myself, said, “Oh, I know who you are,” and turned his back to me.

This man is supposed to be representing the people of Western North Carolina, but he refuses to speak to anyone who might disagree with his cruel and inhumane policies.

The first attempt to pass Trumpcare in the House of Representatives wasn’t severe enough for Meadows and his “Freedom Caucus.” It didn’t take enough away from people. It still saved a few lives, after all. It had to be made more draconian before he and his sleazy band of thugs would vote for it.

I have no use for this man, but I have decided I need to show up with my son’s picture and pray that perhaps I can move him toward compassion. At least I can be there to show that not all the voters in this district are anti-life.

This fight takes its toll. I am stressed and emotional from the fight against Trumpcare. I have spent hours and hours writing to Meadows and my senators (Burr and Tillis), only to have them ignore me or send me form letters filled with lies about the Affordable Care Act.

Now I have fellow Democrats accusing me of being a “purist” and suggesting I should leave the party because I don’t want to vote for anyone who doesn’t support universal access to quality health care. Let your kid die and then tell me it isn’t imperative that we fix this now.

I’ve had little rest lately, as the radicals on the political right try to take away what little progress we have made in access to care. I was arrested in Raleigh in May because I was trying to talk to the NC Senate leader. I was arrested in Washington in July for trying to disrupt a vote to take away health care from up to 33 million people.

I’m putting my body on the line and being vilified as a “purist” for my belief that we need access to care for every human being and speaking the truth that we need candidates who will work for us on this.

I want a living wage for minimum wage. I want to see it set at $18 an hour and tied to inflation so people don’t have to work three jobs to pay their bills. If you’re making $7.25 an hour, you need that money NOW, not in five years. Only people with unacknowledged privilege think it can wait.

The establishment Democrats are exactly what mainstream Republicans were before it was taken over by right-wing radicals. I had differences with them, but could at least respect them. Since 1980, the radicals have managed to drag the entire conversation so far to the right that what once were mainstream Democratic ideals are now considered radical.

A living wage as minimum wage? Socialist! Health care for everyone? Communist!

If you think I’m wrong, just read the 1976 Democratic Platform: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29606.

I’ve been told I’m too divisive and I should leave the Democratic Party and go Green, which I would do if there was a chance in hell they could win against all the big money now flooding the Dems’ corporatist candidates.

So as far as being “purist” and “elitist” goes, screw that. I’m the one staying with the party and trying to make a difference.

I voted for Hillary Clinton even though she said she wouldn’t work on single-payer and she wasn’t for a big increase in the minimum wage all at once. Hoe does that make me a “purist” who should be purged from the party?

So, if you’re in agreement with Mark Meadows and think we don’t need universal access to care or a living wage for people who work 40 or more hours a week, then join his party because you aren’t a Democrat.

Democrats make room for disagreement. Democrats are able to talk things out and compromise.

If you want people who will slavishly follow the party line, join the party of Mark Meadows. They love sheep.

 

 

 

 

Was Jesus a Republican? Nope.

April 2, 2017 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments
This morning, my friend, Josh Brannon, said on Facebook that there are no Christians in the Republican party and it led to a lively discussion, which was joined by a couple of people who took umbrage to that statement.
Oh, the indignation of these poor Jesus-loving people — people who then turn around and reject everything Jesus ever taught in their public policy.
Let me explain why I think Josh is right.
Nine years ago, my son died because Republicans blocked any improvement to our for-profit system of health “care.” They are trying now to dismantle what little progress we made since, and that progress would have saved my son’s life. Indeed, it has saved tens of thousands of lives.
Republicans want to close women’s health clinics even though doing so would mean innocent women (who get their care there because it’s affordable if you can’t get insurance), will die.
People are hungry, but Republicans have cut funding for food stamps and agree with de-funding Meals on Wheels and WIC (Women, Infants and Children).
People are working for a minimum wage that is less than half of what it takes to make ends meet, but Republicans refuse to raise minimum wage and then accuse people of being lazy and use that as an excuse not to help them.
Republicans support opening private, for-profit prisons, which prey on the misery of people, especially low-income people, who have committed even the pettiest of crimes.
The people on the far right wing of Christianity made up this thing called prosperity theology, which says that Jesus will bless you with money if you’re a good person.
The far-right wing of Christianity also believes that women are inferior to men and must be controlled tightly because women were the ones who brought men down with original sin (sex), of which women are ALL guilty, even now. That’s why Vice President Mike Pence won’t have dinner with a woman who’s not his wife — because men can’t be expected to control themselves around women. Poor things can’t resist women’s sex-crazed advances.
Don’t try to say this isn’t so to me because I was raised with this stuff.
God took my son from me because of some egregious sin of mine (probably for not being a submissive woman). Right-wingers have told me this.
I rejected all of this theology as a teenager. I couldn’t read the red print (the words of Jesus, for those who don’t know) and in any way align it with the policies of the Right.
In other words, I couldn’t be a Christian and a Republican. To follow the teachings of Christ (love your neighbor as yourself, feed the hungry, heal the sick, comfort the dying, visit prisoners, welcome the stranger …), I could not be a Republican.
When I told a Republican lawmaker about my son last week, his first question was, “Was he working?”
Really? “Was he working?” Not, “What happened?” Not, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Was he working?”
As a matter of fact, he had a job and he was in school full-time, with a 3.75 GPA. And he volunteered several hours every week.
I asked the politician when unemployment became a crime punishable by death. I thought the death penalty (which I oppose) was reserved for murderers.
My son was working AND he needed help.
But the “Christians”, the party of “pro-life” blocked any effort to allow more Americans the access to care they have, and they continue to try and walk back any progress we have made.
Which brings me to another anti-life point: Republicans favor the death penalty, and they are so stubborn about carrying it out that they have killed innocent people in their insistence that every person sentenced to death is killed. They have blocked appeals in which there was exonerating evidence.
Now let’s fast-forward to Judgment Day as described by Jesus himself in the Gospel of Matthew:
The crowd is divided into two groups, of lambs on the right and goats on the left.
Jesus turns to the right and thanks the lambs for feeding him when he was hungry, offering him a drink when he was thirsty, clothing him when he was naked, visiting him in jail and caring for him when he was sick.
Of course, the lambs claim they never saw him sick or thirsty or in jail or naked and Jesus tells them, “Whatsoever you did for the least of these, you did also for me.”
Next he turns to the left and admonishes the goats for refusing to help when he was in jail or thirsty or hungry or naked or sick, and they protest that they don’t remember seeing him.
“Whatsoever you did to the least of these, you did also to me,” he says, and then banishes them from his presence.
In other words, Jesus himself tells us that if we reject people in need, we reject him. And you can’t be a Christian if you reject Christ.
On Josh Brannon’s thread this morning, there was plenty of “Christian” indignation, but there was not one person able to say anything that would align Christian behavior to Republican policies.
Forget about prayer in school. Think about morality in public policy.
If you want to be both Republican and Christian, you need to work to inject some morality into the policies of the party.

A primer on HB2 and why it’s not going away

May 4, 2016 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Anti-HB2 signs left in the doorway of NC Senate leader Phil Berger

Anti-HB2 signs left in the doorway of NC Senate leader Phil Berger after a rally to oppose the law.

On March 23, the North Carolina General Assembly met in special session to pass House Bill 2, or what would become known as the transgender bathroom law.

The outrage was immediate, as it should have been. Transgender people are being forced to use the bathroom assigned to the gender that they no longer identify with.

If you think you don’t know anyone who is transgender, you probably just don’t know who was born with a penis and who was not. You’ve been peeing with them for a long time, I assure you.

The media went wild with news of the bathroom bill. Companies, sports events, entertainers and tourists pledged to boycott North Carolina, costing the state tens of millions of dollars. That fueled even more media attention about this awful bathroom bill.

Except it isn’t a bathroom bill any more than the motorcycle bill of three years ago was about motorcycles (in case you don’t recall, that “motorcycle safety” law is chock full of restrictions on women’s reproductive rights).

Sure, Article One is all about hating transgender people and denying them the right to use the appropriate bathroom, and that’s just wrong on every level.

But read on.

The law goes on to deny people in North Carolina the right to sue for discrimination in state courts. Instead, we’re supposed to go to federal court, which is much more expensive, likely much farther away and has only one-sixth the statute of limitations (six months versus three years). Most people can’t do that.

The law also takes away the power of local governments to set their own discrimination policies or minimum wage. This, of course, helps keep people in poverty so those in power can criticize them as lazy.

But the bathroom part of the law is what’s making headlines and it has fired up the ultra-conservative base.

And this is exactly what the thugs in power planned.

The furor over the clearly unconstitutional bathroom part of the law has drawn attention away from the rest of the law, which is just as egregious.

The US Justice Department has informed the state that this piece of the bill is a violation of US Civil Rights Law. The state can fight that, and if it does, here’s what “leaders” are hoping for:

With a Republican candidate the base isn’t willing to support, the NC GOP puts the bathroom piece of the law on the November ballot. This will bring out their base, who may or may not vote for president, but will vote down-ticket for Richard Burr, Gov. McCrory, Republican candidates for Congress and these very legislators who crafted HB2.

Like Amendment One, which enshrined hatred into the state Constitution, they know this piece of the law is unconstitutional and will be overturned.

But they have what they want: Republicans elected and the rest of the law intact.

Even if they don’t fight the Justice Department decision, the NC GOP has most of what it wants because law has a clause that states if part of it is overturned or repealed, the rest survives.

And there you have it. HB2 is a naked power grab, fueled by hate and written by thugs.

Meanwhile, suicide hotlines are reporting an increase in the number of calls from transgender people. People are being dragged out of bathrooms because they’re not masculine or feminine enough to satisfy some bigot. Men are going into the women’s bathrooms at Target to check on people and “protect” women.

The worst part is that a majority of people who voted for this law are running unopposed for their seats this fall.

In other words, we’re likely to see a return of the thugs to power because no one wanted to get involved and run against them. We have the government we deserve.

 

Hunker down, NC folks

January 30, 2013 a world of progress, letters, progressive living One comment

Now, wait just a minute. What do you mean you'll just do what you want?

Now, wait just a minute. What do you mean you’ll just do what you want?

On Day One of the new legislative session in North Carolina, it’s clear who will be in charge of the asylum, and it’s not the governor.

I never thought of Pat McCrory as a moderate, but I suppose “moderate” is relative when you’re talking about the right-wing nuts in the General Assembly and their agenda.

I e-mailed McCrory last week and the week before, asking for him to agree to expand Medicaid. But now it appears that the nuts in the Assembly are considering a law that would make it illegal to comply with the federal Affordable Care Act.

Now, they can’t do that, of course. I mean, they can pass a law, but it won’t be legal because state law can’t supersede federal. Still, it sends the powerful message that these people are extremist and we won’t be able to reason with them.

What’s worse is that we’re stuck with them for the next two years because North Carolina has no provision for recalls.

And it’s not just anti-healthcare laws they want to promote; they want to enshrine the state’s regressive right-to-work laws in the Constitution the way they did with their anti-marriage-equality stance.

They want to reduce unemployment compensation to the point people who lose their jobs will have no means to pay their bills, even for a couple of months.

Apparently, they’re introducing these bills without even talking to Gov. McCrory.

I foresee a really nasty couple of years ahead, and I can only hope we can unseat the bastards then.