Here's your "smaller government"

Photo from the Guardian

Tom Campbell, Carly Fiorina, Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman are all running for office in California calling for smaller government with less business regulations. Between the recent mining tragedy in West Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (with the loss of human and animal life), you can see where their "smaller government" will take us.

Maybe the Republicans just don't care if there are any birds in the sky or fish in the sea.

On Tuesday, Nov, 4

VOTE!

Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But oportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker, sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt out basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

You betcha! Think of this as America's new drinking game*

*Or if you prefer, you can donate a dollar to the Obama/Biden or the No on Prop 8 campaign.

This is what America looks like now

I thought that the Dems were going to have to get Zhang Yimou to get any decent buzz for the convention. Well, he can save his plane ticket.

From Palestine to Soweto to Sadr City, there are people who will now have faith that this is not a man who will bust down their door and destroy their lives. Once again, people will be able to say, "Thank God! The Americans are here!"

To say nothing of what could happen from Neah Bay, Washington to Key West, Florida; and Imperial Beach, California to Van Buren, Maine.

Who's dismayed more? The Borg Queen or John McCain?

Teachers with guns? That'll liven up those faculty meetings!*

And I betcha that the art and music departments will get all their funding, now, too... or else!





*The Texas state legislature votes to let teachers bear arms. Who's next? Hotel maids and garment workers? Yee haw!

Not a nice (or smart) thing to do

Gov. Schwarzenegger, as threatened, signed an executive order to reduce the salaries of 200,000 employees to the Federal minimum wage as a result of the ongoing state budgest stalemate. Arnold is personally worth more than $100,000,000.

The ripple effect of his stunt could end up costing the state more money. Not to mention make him very unpopular around state employees.

McCain can't have it both ways

First, Sen. McCain lambasted Sen. Barack Obama for a lack of foreign policy experience. Then when Sen. Obama draws a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, he snidely says, that he'd go to speak in Berlin, too, but he preferred to spend his time in America's heartland campaigning.

I'd thought that it would be fitting for McCain to have a post in the Obama cabinet as a show of bipartisanship, most fittingly as Secretary for Veteran Affairs. Yet now that he's letting the far right dictate more of his platform, and spoken out against gay adoption (among issues), perhaps it would be time for him to consider retiring from politics altogether.

Help save the last tattered shreds of your democracy

The California State Legislature is about to balance the state budget by taking funds needed to run libaries. Our education programs have yet to recover from the last time they did this kind of circumvention of the people's will with taking funds from vital programs.

The Republicans want to concurrently allow tax loopholes for the wealthy and to offer unjustified tax rebates.

Call the Governor at (916) 445-2841, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass at (916) 319-2047, Senate Pro Tem Don Perata at (916) 651-4009; and call or email your State Assemblymember or Senator ...today!

One more word about "traditional weddings" and I might lose it

Forms of traditional arranged weddings are still practiced by more than half of the world's population.

This includes Afghanistan, Austalia, Canada, China, England (!), India, Iraq, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa and Vietnam.

The bride-to-be might even be murdered by the family of the groom if they don't think the dowry is enough. Though the practice is largely illegal, they are often disguised as accidents or suicides.

So, please, if anybody happens to mention that they're voting for the constitutional amendment this November, casually ask them how much the parents had to pay for a dowry in their wedding.

Some civil servants in California don't want to do their job

County clerks in Butte, Kern and Merced counties have tried to get around performing same-sex marriages--by ceasing to officiate any weddings --gay or straight-- when the upcoming June 17th date set by the State Supreme Court rolls around. That's defending traditional marriage alright.

In Merced, at least, the County Clerk's office retracted their statement once they heard from county officials.

The typical excuse has been a lack of financial recources, space or staff. At first I thought, to myself, if that's the way you want it, then perhaps the state of California might not have the resources to give you any water from the California Aqueduct, or power from the state grid. And for certain, GLBT folk will know where not to spend their money on vacation (especially since more Californians are vacationing in-state with the high price of gas and plane tickets).

Yet in Kern County, one of the two remaining counties trying to not officiate same-sex marriages, a coalition of straight churches have pledged to stand by and have a minister on hand to perform weddings at all times to anyone who may need them*. With the November constitutional amendment on the ballot, it would be counterintuitive to hurt our allies by calling for a complete and outright boycott of those counties, in the very portions of California where support and goodwill are crucial. At the least, we won't honeymoon there.

Perhaps the best revenge would be for those County Clerks that don't want to follow the law just get the privilege of sitting back and watching the rest of California's counties reap the financial windfall expected to follow the legalization of same-sex marriages.

And maybe, too, getting to see how stupid they'll look to the rest of the state. The SF Chronicle noted that Contra Costa County Clerk Stephen Weir called officiating same-sex couple's weddings a no-brainer, noting that his County clerk's office makes $72,000 a year already in officiating weddings. The Californian reported that Kern County has recouped a tidy profit by providing marriages over the last two months, at $30 a pop. They also mentioned that County Clerk Barnett has cancelled 25 heterosexual marriages that had been already scheduled for after her June 13th deadline (does that mean that, technically, Barnett is against all marriage?) throwing the nuptials of those couples into limbo. Let's see how those county officials that drag their feet try to come hat in hand in Sacramento for more funding for schools and roads and other services when they turned their nose up at easy, legal money. If you know anyone who lives in Kern County, you might let them know how Barnett's decision has cost the county thousands of dollars in potential income --and be sure to remember that come election day.

It isn't like anyone was asking them to produce pollution-emitting cars, or sell guns that would be used in robberies or anything heinous that would actually affect the quality of life of other Californians.

*It might not be a bad idea to turn a positive spin on this, and send notes of thank you to the Rev. Byrd Tetzlaff, of the Unitarian Universalist church, who has pledged to be on hand at the County clerk's office, all day, every day through November 4, to perform weddings for free to any couple who shows up. You can e-mail her at minister@uufkc.org or drop her a note (and maybe a donation) at:

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Kern County

POB 296

Bakersfield, CA 93302-0296

Love makes a family... and the human race, too

There is a presumption --even among heterosexual supporters of same-sex marriage-- that marriage has had but one exclusive definition that never evolved throughout history.

For some twenty thousand years or so, relationships among indigenous peoples in California did not require a license from the county clerk's office (nor did divorce). Some groups of peoples allowed for various forms of same-sex couples, others did not. It's the same basic history in Africa and much of the rest of the world. Until relatively recently, men and women weren't even allowed to marry who they wanted to; that was up to the tribal elders or parents. Actually, arranged marriages are still the rule for several billion human beings worldwide today.

If anything, this notion of societal recognized relationships consisting of state-sanctioned marriage between one man and one woman is quite a recent development in human history.

There wouldn't even be an Anglican Church if the Pope would've granted Henry VIII the right to divorce he wanted --and a few women could have kept their heads. Slaves in America weren't allowed to marry in some states, nor freedmen and slaves in others; until the 1967 Supreme Court ruling on miscegenation there was a patchwork quilt of state laws as to who could marry who. And don't get me started on cousins. It is still illegal in some communities for any unmarried people to co-habitate: whether they be caregivers, friends or roommates just splitting the rent. It was not so long ago that the Nazis (and the Americans) would put couples of different religions or races into concentration camps, irrespective of whether they were opposite sex or same-sex couples.

One could even argue that the world has pretty much started to slide to ruin since people codified the only recognized relationships as those sanctioned by the state between one man and one woman.

In the LA Times on Friday, after the historic California Supreme Court ruling, acting LA County Registrar-Recorder Dean C. Logan stated that plans were underway to accommodate county employees uncomfortable with officiating same-sex marriages. There might be a conflict with non-discrimination statutes there. Even if not covered specifically, it opens a nasty bucket of worms. with many of the world's organized religions not recognizing each other, as well as those who still harbor antipathy for people of certain races, ethnicities nationalities body size-- this could cause chaos in government if civil service workers could chose who they would or or wouldn't assist. Would county lifeguards let people drown? Would the fire department respond only to the fires they desired?

What of those not in any kind of committed relationship? Over a thousand statutes favor state-recognized marriages while penalizing single persons --not just at tax time, either. A married person who survives their spouse gets screwed over, too. ln some cultures, the wife is obligated to be thrown onto her husband's funeral pyre. This is the established custom for more people than live in all of Europe --scarcely a radical fringe.

Nobody wins by continuing to maintain a prime meridian oriented on the one-man-one-woman nuclear family axis, even if we ourselves are pledged (or resigned to) not follow it. Even the staunchest, shrillest proponents of this conviction as the fundamental keystone upon which civilization is built, or worship as some golden calf at the heart of all humankind, fail to account for all of the insurmountable evidence that disproves their dogma. They themselves have shown --despite their recent claims to the contrary-- that they themselves aren't as devoted heart and soul to this myopic construct. After all this time, no society has succeeded at permanently stamping out the "world's oldest profession," have they?

Everyone belongs to the human race, all people in all the relationships that we live our lives, whether we live them as we would have it by design or by default. We all contribute and draw from the whole. Every breath of every human helps provide the oxygen which sustains life --even those full of hot air.

A lot of good it does me, since I don't have anyone (yet) in mind to marry

Someone really ought to let CSU Fullerton know that the USSR doesn't exist anymore

Another day, another loyalty oath scandal. It would appear that California is hellbent on ensuring that their universities are churning out graduates unable to function in the 21st century.

The latest loyalty oath mess suggests that CSU Fullerton isn't keeping up on what is happening around the rest of the state.

One wonders how recent their textbooks must be. Are they still using rotary phones?

If you're gonna go after Rev. Wright, then you better go after Rev. Hagee

Sen. Barack Obama is taking a hit in the polls as the far right continues to bash him for his ties to the Rev. Wright, even though Obama has denounced his controversial remarks and taken great pains to distance himself from the minister.

Strangely, though, the same media are giving Sen John McCain a Get Out of Jail Free card in regards to the Rev. John Hagee, who he has had to distance himself from under similar circumstances.

Rev. Hagee has, among other things, repeatedly claimed that hurricane Katrina was God's wrath on the sinners of New Orleans for their support of homosexuality.


I have yet to hear an explanation for why the incompetence of the Federal government could be interpreted as God's wrath, not to mention the sheer scope of the devastation Katrina caused.


Rev. Hagee should not only have to face the citizens of New Orleans for his remarks, but he really ought to explain himself to the folks who were affected by Katrina in the communities of Beaumont, Bridge City, Nederland, Orange, Pinehurst, Port Arthur and Vidor, in Texas; Abbeville, Amelia, Avery Island, Baldwin, Barataria, Bayou Vista, Belcambre, Bell City, Bertandville, Bohemia, Boothville, Bourg, Buras, Burrwood, Calumet, Cameron, Carlisle, Centerville, Chacahoula, Chauvin, Cocodrie, Crowley, Crown Point, Creole, Dalcour, Davant, Diamond, Donner, Dulac, Eden Isle, Empire, Erath, Esther, Franklin, Gibson, Galliano, Garden City, Golden Meadow, Grand Chenier, Grand Lake, Gueydan, Hackberry, Hayes, Henry, Hickory, Holly Beach, Holmwood, Houma, Indian Bayou, Intracoastal City, Isle Jean Charles, Jean Lafitte, Jeanerette, Jennings, Jesuit, Bend, Kaplan, Lacassine, Lacombe, Lake Arthur, Lake Charles, Leeville, Louisa, Mandeville, Maurice, Meaux, Montegut, Morgan City, Morse, Myrtle Grove, Nairn, Naomi, New Iberia, Oak Grove, Patterson, Pearl River, Pecan Island, Perry, Phoenix, Point a la Hache, Point-aux-Chenes, Port Fourchon, Port Nickle, Port Sulphur, Poydras, Reggio, Saint Bernard, Slidell, Sulphur, Shell Beach, Theriot, Tidewater, Toomey, Triumph, Venice, Vinton, Welsh, and Yscloskey in Lousiana; and Bay Saint Louis, Biloxi, Diamondhead, Gulfport, Long Beach, Lyman, Moss Point, Nicholson, Ocean Springs, Pass Christian, Pearlington and Waveland in Mississippi.*

Okay, I'm mad enough now that I'm gonna have to go eat a chocolate coffee pudding. And it's all Rev. Hagee's fault.





*My apologies to any towns I inadvertently left off. I'm sure there were more.

The definition of incredulous

Today Chief Bratton insisted that there was no basis in any of the 320 complaints of racial profiling by the LAPD filed in 2007 ...as they have claimed for the past six years running.


And although you wouldn't know it from the local media, yesterday was the anniversary of the verdict and [your choice:] the verdict in the Rodney King Trial/the 1993 LA Riots/the LA Uprising.

Photo by Joseph Sternfeld

At least they've stopped removing the street signs from the intersection of Florence and Normandie, as if that was all it took to remove the whole of what happened from our collective memory.

Is it possible for the Chinese to be as stupid as straight white men?

No city in the United States is as associated with Chiang kai Shek, the "Father of the Republic of China," as San Francisco. No city in the United States has seen as many refugees from the Communist takeover of mainland China as San Francisco. So what were they thinking, bringing the Olympic torch to the City?

Not just the Olympic Committee, but the People's Republic of China, the Mayor of San Francisco, and anyone else with half a brain in the City (there are enough people already around the Bay Area if not the whole country that think you can sooner find an Eskimo at the Equator than someone with half a brain in San Francisco, but I wouldn't say that).

Somewhere, the old power elite of the City from the 1950s and '60s that never saw a longhaired anti-establishment protester they didn't want to smack right into the Bay are either scratching their heads in confusion or laughing their heads off in bemusement.

Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today
Any shock they should try to stem,
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.
Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose,
Anything goes.
If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like,
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose.
When ev'ry night the set that's smart is in--
Truding in nudist parties in
Studios,
Anything goes.

When Missus Ned McLean (God bless her)
Can get Russian Reds to "yes" her,
Then I suppose
Anything goes.
When Rockefeller still can hoard en--
Nough money to let Max Gordon
Produce his shows,
Anything goes.
The world has gone mad today,
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
And that gent today,
You gave a cent today,
Once had several chateaux.
When folks who still can ride in jitneys
Find out Vanderbilt and Whitneys
Lack baby clo'es,
Anything goes.

If Samuel Goldwyn can with great conviction
Instruct Anna Sten in diction,
Then Anna shows
Anything goes.
When you hear that Lady Mendel standing up
Now turns a handspring landing up--
On her toes,
Anything goes.
Just think of those shocks you've got
And all those knocks you've got
And those blues you've got
From that news you've got
And those pains you've got
(If any brains you've got)
From those little radios.

So Missus R., with all her trimmin's,
Can broadcast a bed from Simmons
'Cause Franklin knows
Anything goes.









(I don't know why Cole Porter suddenly seemed appropriate here with all that very serious shouting and all along the Olympic torch route, but I didn't know any 'Please don't kill the nuns in Tibet' songs)

I tried to give Sally Kern the benefit of a doubt, but in the end,she proved to be not just wrong, but SCARY wrong

The link above will take you to Daily Oklahoman website coverage, which includes the entire unedited text as part of the ongoing series on the Sally Kern controversy. You might want to save it for Halloween, or to scare your kids by showing them how they'll turn out if they don't stay in school.

When I did send my letter to Rep. Kern, it was polite, and with the belief that she was a reasonable person. Now I'm beginning to think she may have grown up downwind from a meth lab. The things she says are so crazy, they stopped even being scary... except for the fact that this is an elected official in the state of Oklahoma, and there are other people who think like her! She even cites enough sources in the podcast to suggest that she's been indoctrinated or taught or brainwashed (no, scratch that; her brain needs a good washing). Somebody out there has a serious case of bad kharma coming to them.

I guess that it was just too beautiful of a day outside for me to not have to pay the price.

Pick up a pen. Now. Help save a life

Letters of support are urgently needed to help persuade the Home Office of the United Kingdom to grant permanent asylum to Mehdi Kazemi, who is being threatened with deportation back to Iran. Mehdi has learned that his lover, when tortured, revealed Mehdi's name to authorites, before he was executed. To date, more than 4,000 people have been executed by the Iranian regime.

Click on the header at top to find out how you may assist. In addition, you may send letters to:

Lord Right Honourable Waheed Alli
The SW1 Delivery Office
53 Nine Elms Lane
London, UK
SW8 5BB

or

The Lord Alli
House of Lords
London, UK
SW
1A OPW

You may also send e-mails to Lord Alli, the gay member of the House of Lords who is championing Mehdi's cause, at:

alliw@parliament.uk

If you don't like California, why would you be here, anyway?

Marianne Kearney-Brown Photo: Robert Durrell / LA Times

Cal State East Bay instructor Marianne Kearney-Brown has been reinstated after a statewide row over her being fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath ...to the state of California. I had no idea we were at war with any of the other states (but we know what the folks in Oregon think of Californians).

The loyalty oath, which all public employees are required to sign, states that they are willing to uphold and bear arms to defend the constitution of the state of California and the US Constitution; it has apparently been around since the Red scare of the early 1950s but I don't remember having signed one, as is the case with many public employees, according to the LA Times article.

Kearney-Brown, a Quaker pacifist, pointed out that the wording of the oath would actually let non-citizen terrorists work as public employees, but penalize loyal citizens who don't want necessarily to take a bullet for the Golden State. Fortunately, a compromise oath was worked out... only some 55 years since it was first instated. And we wonder why the state is running a deficit...