The corporate media are spinning last week's off year elections like crazy. This commentary in the 11/8/09 Philadelphia Inquirer reflected the dominant narrative being pushed.

Even before voters went to the polls last week, moderate congressional Democrats were anxious. Would the swing voters who coalesced around Barack Obama almost exactly one year ago stay with the Democrats or defect to the Republicans?

The answer came Tuesday night as Republican gubernatorial candidates swept to power in New Jersey and Virginia, with the help of large packs of self-described independents.

Exit polls circulating on the House floor Wednesday were even more unnerving to Democrats. The Republican candidates, the polls indicated, had received the votes of two-thirds of independent voters.

There is an underlying assumption with this analysis, that the independent voters in the two years' elections were demographically comparable. One obvious problem with such analysis is that independent voters are not a cohesive, uniform group. There consist several major categories of independents.

1) Independents with who are equally supportive or hostile to Democrats and Republicans over time: The corporate media pretend that this group represents all independents.

2) Republican leaning independents

3) Democratic leaning independents

4) Independents who are to the left of the Democrats

In last week's elections, turnout was quite low. The only category of independents that turned out much at all was category 2. Let's talk about why the other independents showed little interest in these elections.

1) Neither party has performed very well in Congress or in the state houses in terms of actual governing. That gives neutral independents very little positive reason to show up. Since off year elections aren't Earth shatteringly important, there wasn't much reason for this group to be afraid of not showing up.

3) and 4) The Democrats in Congress and the White House have governed more like Republicans than Democrats. They can't seem to get even a strong public option through, even though that is a compromise from what the overwhelming majority of Americans want, Medicare for All (the dominant single payer proposal in the US).

When you take Democratic oriented independents, left independents, and registered Democrats, you have some people who have been seriously demoralized by the behavior of the White House, the Congressional leadership, and corrupt Phonycrats like Max Baucus whose elective offices have been treated as if they were up for auction on EBay. Look at the core Democratic/liberal constituencies that have been ignored or screwed over big time.

- The Peace Movement

- Abortion Rights Supporters

- Liberal Activists

- Organized Labor

- Human Rights Activists

- Marijuana Legalization Advocates

- The Poor

- The Middle Class

- Supporters of State/Church Separation

- Advocates of Economic Justice

Queers have done a bit better, getting passage of hate crimes legislation. But, we had to mount a national march, protest an HRC dinner where Obama was speaking, and go ballistic on the blogs to even get the Democrats to acknowledge that we exist.

Under these circumstances, it isn't shocking that many voters who turned out in 2008 stayed home in 2009. The pools of independent voters in the two years were in no way comparable.

Yet, the corporate media make an apples to orgasms comparison in order to justify their claim that the Democrats actually need to move to the right. Of course, the corporate media always tell the Democrats to move to the right regardless of election results, while never telling the Goppers to move to the left. But, what is bizarre is that the post election shift in the House healthcare debate indicates that the Democrats are actually following this crazy advice.

The GOP style governing by the "Democratic" leadership is causing other problems for the jackasses. People who are frustrated and demoralized are not volunteering for campaigns. Also, liberal donors have had to put resources into ads against corrupt Phonycrats like the appalling Max Baucus, money that could have gone to helping Democratic candidates. Many of us are refusing all DNC, DCCC, and DSCC donation requests as a matter of basic ethics.

If the Democrats don't get their heads out of their posteriors and move to the left, many of their voters will stay home in 2010. Much of the donor well will run dry for the Democrats in 2010 unless things get better. This will put the GOP in a position to pick up seats, in spite of that party's many weaknesses. Democrats need to govern in a way that brings real, positive change.

A lot of this goes back to the corporate shills' distortion of the 1994 GOP election results. Bill Clinton, a rightist Dixiecrat pushed through a more draconian version of the military ban and corrupt trade deals like NAFTA while taking very little positive action on issues Democrats care about. Core Democratic constituencies stayed home in response, and the corporate media spun it as the nation shifting to the right and embracing the values of the GOP.



Many Democrats are stupid enough to believe that spin to this very day. If they don't wake up and listen to their own voters, history may very well repeat itself.

Photos: See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
phatman
veni markovski

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (a racist, misogynistic, and heterosexist hate group as evil as the Ku Klux Klan) issued a statement demanding that abortion coverage be taken out of healthcare legislation in the House last weekend.

Abortion is a perfectly legitimate medical procedure and a basic right of women. No one can honestly argue otherwise. Opposition to abortion rights is based largely on a venomous and fanatical hatred of women and a desire to keep women down. The decision by an organization which bans women from being members to attack women may not be surprising, but it is reprehensible.

Of course, racism has always played role in Roman Catholic opposition to abortion too. Lay leaders like Adolph Hitler and Pat Buchanan have openly opposed abortion in order to force white women to have more white babies. Current RCC Pope, Joseph Ratzinger may not express such views openly, but obsessive racism plays a role in everything he does, especially his genocidal campaign against condom use in Africa.

Obviously, any meddling in politics by a church or by church leaders is a violation of the legal commitment made when any religious group accepts tax exempt status. The fact that the RCC and the Mormon church/hate group still are tax exempt shows our government's utter disdain for the rule of law.

Even if one were to accept the anti American meddling by clerics in general, the action of these RCC bishops is specifically repugnant. They should be using all of this time and energy on stopping the rampant rape of children within their priesthood. Instead, the vast majority of their energy on the subject of child molestation is to try to cover up their denomination's involvement in it.

A church that prefers attacking women to stopping their own child molesters is beneath contempt. In fact, this mentality is beneath the comprehension of any moral, civilized human being.

 

Personally, I don't have any interest in the failed, oppressive, and violent hetero institution of marriage. However, I am sick of the bigoted mentality of the Christian Right nutjobs who use same sex marriage as an excuse to lash out at queers. So, I'm letting my money do my talking. Here's the text of an email I sent to Maine Tourism.

I was planning on taking a vacation in New England next summer. I really enjoyed going to Massachusetts, and I planned on exploring more of the region. I had even looked into museums and galleries in your state.

However, now that Maine voters have embraced vicious homophobic bigotry, I'm leaving Maine off of that trip. I don't want any of my gay dollars in the pockets of those crazy bigots who voted that way.

You Can Send an Email to Maine Tourism Too

Illustration at top: ddogbreath



By the way, when I was looking for a photo or illustration for this post, I considered putting the words "Fuck Maine" in one of those online sign making sites. I got some
humorous results when I accidentally put them into a site that sells actual neon signs.

Enjoy!

 

The rampant rape of children in the Roman Catholic priesthood just won't stop. Coverage of alleged molestation by Ratzi's beloved priests doesn't stop either, despite efforts by the RCC hierarchy to intimidate the press into silence.

Tulsa, OK
From Tulsa World 11/4/09:

An unidentified plaintiff has filed a lawsuit against a former priest and the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, alleging sexual molestation of a minor and failure to warn of past accusations.

Ken Lewis was "laicized," or dismissed from the clerical state, in 2007 after a history of sexual-abuse allegations. He is the only priest to be defrocked in the Tulsa diocese's history.

Bishop Edward Slattery is also named as a defendant in the suit, which seeks more than $10,000 in damages.

North Dakota
From Chicago Tribune 10/22/09:

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in North Dakota, David Gaffaney, 47, of Minnesota, accuses Charles Anthony "Raimond" Rose, now 76, of fondling him at a Ramada Inn in Orlando, Fla., while Gaffaney was sleeping. The two were on a field trip sponsored by Shanley High School, a Roman Catholic School in Fargo, N.D.

Gaffaney came forward when he learned about five other lawsuits filed against Rose last summer. Rose faces multiple suits for allegedly abusing students at two schools run by the Christian Brothers in Minnesota.

Dominican Republic

From Montreal Gazette 10/24/09

A former Canadian priest sitting in a Dominican Republic jail cell awaiting extradition to Canada on multiple sexual molestation charges was working as a scuba diving instructor at a hotel before local authorities arrested him this week.

Joao Jose Correira Duarte, a former Windsor, Ont., priest also known as John Duarte, faces nine counts of sexually exploiting 12-to-17-year-old boys in Haiti over a 10-year span.

He was arrested Tuesday by Dominican immigration and counter-narcotics agents in a joint operation, local authorities said.

Wilmington, DE
From Reuters 11/2/09:

Victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in Delaware will be "egregiously" harmed if they are unable to tell their stories in court, a lawyer for the alleged victims told a federal bankruptcy hearing on Monday.

The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington filed for bankruptcy last month, temporarily delaying eight civil trials that were about to start in sex-abuse lawsuits involving priests.

Bishop W. Francis Malooly has said bankruptcy, the seventh by a U.S. diocese, is the quickest way to resolve the 142 claims that stem from allegations of abuse beginning as far back as 1954.

While the diocese is bankrupt, its 58 parishes are not, and abuse victims want to pursue their lawsuits against them.

The child molestation and the cover ups continue unabated. Yet, the Justice Department continues to avoid prosecuting Roman Catholic clergy under RICO. This is a bipartisan scandal that undermines the rule of law and any notion of human decency.

Note to Commenters:
In a previous posting, I laid out a policy about defending clerical child molestation or any other kind of child abuse. That policy is permanent and will be enforced.

Any and all efforts to defend Ratzi and the Catholic clergy function as enabling Catholic priests to go on raping kids. There are some really sick things on the Internet, but that is going to far, at least on this blog. Anyone who engages in this sickening viciousness will discover that the following three things will happen.

1) Those comments will no longer be published.

2) All future comments by that poster will be rejected.

3) Links to any blogs written by those commenters will disappear.

This goes double for trolls who pretend to be concerned about child abuse while defending the pro molestation policies of the Catholic Church or denying that they exist.

Currently, there are almost 120,000 US Troops occupying Iraq along with well over 100,000 expensive and unaccountable mercenaries.

US law now says that all of our troops must be out of Iraq, but not until all the way to the end of 2011. Who knows if even this will happen? Some government officials are using political disputes in Iraq to try to justify putting off the partial withdrawals that are supposed to lead up to all of our troops taken out of that country.

Meanwhile, more US troops will be killed and wounded, a lot more Iraqis will be slaughtered, and hundreds of billions of dollars in US government funds will be wasted on this corrupt and senseless venture. Yet, the corporate media, many bloggers, and even much of the peace movement are ignoring Iraq. I urge you to join me in resisting this trend. Here are a couple of important news items on Iraq that are too important to let go.

Big Oil Gets Big Contract in Iraq
From Democracy Now! 11/05/09:

In Iraq, the oil giants Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell have been awarded a contract to develop a southern Iraqi oil field. It’s first major deal for an American-led bid since the US invasion of 2003 and the latest in a series of deals awarded by the Iraqi government.

This is a reminder of why we went to war in Iraq. It also is interesting to note that the Dutch government sent troops to Iraq despite popular opposition. British involvement in the war had been rewarded with a big contract for British Petroleum a couple of days before.

Parents of Iraq War Soldier Who Committed Suicide Speak Out
Soldier suicides have gone up dramatically since the Iraq War started as have suicides of veterans after people started coming home from the Iraqtastrophe.
From Democracy Now! 10/27/09:

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We turn now to a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive. Gregg and Jannett Keesling are the parents of Chancellor Keesling, a US soldier who took his own life on June 19th of this year. Chancellor was on his second [tour of duty] in Iraq. During his first deployment, he suffered mental health issues so severe he was placed on suicide watch. After getting back to the United States, Chancellor had turned down a bonus offer to return to Iraq in the hopes he wouldn’t be redeployed. But he was called back in May. One month later, he took his own life.

AMY GOODMAN: Since Chancellor’s death, Gregg and Jannett Keesling have yet to receive a letter of condolence from President Obama. After making inquiries, they discovered this was not because of an oversight. Instead, it’s because of a longstanding US policy to deny presidential condolence letters to the families of soldiers who have committed suicide.

Gregg and Jannett Keesling join us now from Indianapolis, where they live. This is the first time they’re sharing their story in a national broadcast.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Gregg, let me go first to Jannett. Tell us about your son. Tell us about Chancellor. Tell us why he joined the military, his first tour of duty, and then ultimately deciding to go back, or being called back.

Read what they have to say or watch below.

From Rep. Dennich Kucinich's 10/30/09 press release: (Hat Tip to Dandelion Salad)

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) sent a letter Comptroller of the Currency, Mr. John Dugan, requesting an investigation of the effect on consumer credit scores of some bank practices in advance of the enactment of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act.

Consumer credit scores, originally developed to measure a consumer’s creditworthiness, have become much more influential in a consumer’s life. Credit scores are now used in writing insurance policies and even in determining employability. Kucinich is concerned that some practices, such as charging “inactivity fees” for unused credit, have the potential to damage consumer credit scores.

“Consumers who have worked hard to maintain a healthy credit score will be faced with an unfair choice: they can either pay a new annual fee to maintain available credit levels and the healthy credit score that comes along with it, or cancel unused cards, lose their creditworthiness, and pay higher interest rates on loans,” writes Kucinich in the letter.

“It is simply outrageous that at a time when the American people are being encouraged to increase their savings and spend more responsibly, some credit card companies are preparing to punish their customers for doing precisely that.”

Full Press Release Including Letter

The banksters have been going crazy with ripoffs so they can keep paying their upper management enormous salaries and bonuses in spite of those executives mismanaging the banks. Sadly, Congress and the Obama administration are doing too little to protect consumers from this thievery.

Billionaires for Wealthcare has a new song that they released at a recent Glendale, CA protest against the health insurance company Cigna.

When CIGNA representatives refused to speak with protesters at their offices in Glendale, CA yesterday morning, the Billionaires for Wealthcare came to their defense. We serenaded these meddlesome masses with a new song we like to call “Profits Before People.” See the lyrics here.

More “Billionaires” music!

Personally, I would love to hear this kind of music on pop radio stations, but somehow, I doubt Clear Channel would go along with it.

Ugh.

The only good news for NYC tonight is that Michael Bloomberg is 67 years old.

I've admired John Liu for some time now. He has done a lot of oversight of the MTA and stood up for transit riders on the City Council. Mayor Bloomberg and his appointees to the MTA board have done little but use the MTA as a cash cow for Bloomberg's rich friends. Here's the text of the email.

Election Day is Tuesday.

Do you know where your polling site is located?

Click here to find out.

Nearly a year ago, Republican Mike Bloomberg disregarded the will of the people when he overturned the term limits law we voted for twice.

Meanwhile, our City continues to become more unaffordable because of sky-high rents, taxes, fines, fares, and fees.

We can do better.

I have known Bill Thompson for many years. He has the vision and the experience we need to make our City more affordable for working families.

On Election Day -- Tuesday, November 3rd -- come out and vote for Bill Thompson. Together, we can shape a new direction for New York City and tell Mike Bloomberg that eight is enough.

Click the link below to find out where your poll site is and do your civic duty: vote!

http://www.thompson2009.com/pollsite

Thank you.

Sincerely,

John Liu
Democratic Nominee for New York City Comptroller

If you wonder why I think Michael Bloomberg is such a terrible mayor, my previous postings on him should give you many of the reasons.

Michael Bloomberg has run NYC like a failed bank or brokerage firm. The Thompson campaign is fond of saying "Eight Is Enough" referring to Bloomberg's broken promises on term limits. I say, "Eight is way, way, too many."

Photo: Edwin Martinez1