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What Does the “Left” Actually Want?

2013-02-17 11:57:00 (читать в оригинале)

The fairy tales of Charles Perrault

We already know what the right wants.  They have been quite clear about that.

They want to be able to rape and pillage and steal in the manner of Ivan The Terrible, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Al Capone and General Franco. With an army of hoods, thugs, enforcers and henchmen to protect them and put down any resistance.

But what is that the left wants ?

Well I am going to take a guess here based on what I have read and heard of the the last 20 years or so.

Capitalism without the greed, corruption,  fraud, inhumanity, brutality, heartlessness and arrogance. All the traits that define capitalism.  

The trust busting of Teddy Roosevelt, the social programs of FDR,  the space programs of JFK, civil rights of LBJ, energy and ecological policies of Carter and technical savvy of Clinton.   But with out all that nasty militarism and corporatism and imperialism.

A congress that listens to people with no money more that those with all the money.   That put’s each member’s personal desires aside for the good of the citizens.

Business that puts the welfare of the workers and consumers and the planet ahead of any personal gain.

A society that is educated, informed, astute and involved. One that treats everyone equally. (More or less)

And economy that is just and fair and based on the needs of the people as a whole. Regards the planet and all its life as sacred.

Where The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid and Roy Rogers come galloping into town and “Clean it up” with little or no violence and certainly no bloodshed.

This list is obviously a fantasy and exits only in the minds of those who believe in such things or are on some kind of drugs since it ain’t no way gonna happen in reality.   A list of contradictions and incongruities.

In other words a world that is as unlikely to materialize for the left as much as for the right. Not and keep the current system/government/economy intact.

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Why Do Some States Have More LGBT People Than Others?

2013-02-17 11:57:00 (читать в оригинале)

Figure by Gallop

Just in from Gallop:

The percentage of U.S. adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) ranges from 1.7% in North Dakota to 5.1% in Hawaii and 10% in the District of Columbia, according to Gallup surveys conducted from June-December 2012. Residents in the District of Columbia were most likely to identify as LGBT (10%). Among states, the highest percentage was in Hawaii (5.1%) and the lowest in North Dakota (1.7%), but all states are within two percentage points of the nationwide average of 3.5%.

Assuming that the percentage of children born LGBT is the same everywhere, what accounts for the differences between the states?

Are the percentages higher in bluer states because more LGBT people have moved there, or because LGBT people living there feel safer answering the pollster’s question, or some combination of both?

The study’s authors, Gary J. Gates and Frank Newport, state that “LGBT people who live in places where they feel accepted may be more likely than those who live in places where they feel stigmatized to reveal their sexual orientation or gender identity to a survey interviewer”, and they chalk up the differences among the states to this dynamic.

A reasonable assumption.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that some LGBT people do migrate from repressive to more welcoming states.  (Disclosure: I’m am one of them.)  What we don’t know is whether enough LGBT people do this to make a statistical difference in the poll numbers.  Certainly this is not an option everyone can afford, and many choose to stay in their home states to help bring about change.

What do you think?

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Cardinal Mahony Turns Water Into Whine

2013-02-17 11:57:00 (читать в оригинале)

I’m going to try to be charitable, but Cardinal Roger Mahony makes that very tough with his blog post on Thursday about what he’s experienced since the 12,000 pages of documents related to his handling of clergy child sexual abusers became public.  The water of baptism may be at the heart of the Christian church, but Mahony has turned that water into whine.

First, he misunderstands humility and humiliation. According to Thomas Aquinas, “the virtue of humility consists in this, that one keep himself within his own limits; he does not stretch himself to what is above him, but he subjects himself to his superior.” Humiliation is what happens when one goes outside those limits and gets caught at it, especially when one is caught trying to play God.

Humility is a virtue; humiliation is punishment that may teach someone humility.

That, apparently, is the part that Mahony doesn’t like:

Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand:  I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility.  Rather, I am being called to something deeper–to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.

Um, no. He is being humiliated because he has not served in humility.

Yesterday, he posted again on the subject of humility, looking at Ignatius of Loyola’s thoughts on humility in his Spiritual Exercises, and again makes clear he doesn’t understand what he’s been reading and praying for 38 years. Ignatius writes that the most perfect kind of humility includes choosing

• poverty with Christ poor, rather than riches;
• insults with Christ loaded with them, rather than honors;
• worthless and a fool for Christ, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent.

The key words that Mahony misses are “with Christ” and “for Christ”. Ignatius is saying that when a Christian accepts insults for following in Christ’s steps, that is humility. Since his record on handling sexual predators among the priests in his care became public, Mahony has been targeted with insults for following in the path of Herod. These are not the same thing.

In Thursday’s post, he makes this same mistake in trying to understand Jesus’ words in Luke 9:23: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Despite the popular misconception, taking up one’s cross is not “dealing with whatever troubles your life”; it is dealing with the consequences of following Christ’s path of lifting up the lowly and proclaiming freedom for the oppressed, as Jesus described things in Luke 4.

As for insults . . . The prophets of the Hebrew scriptures were quite poetic in the insults they aimed — with divine approval and at God’s command, no less — at the priests, the kings, and the powerful of their days. One of my favorite prophetic insults is from Ezekiel 16, in which the prophet skewers the high and mighty of Jerusalem for their behavior vis-a-vis the poor and needy:

See, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you, ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. Your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. You not only followed their ways, and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it. Samaria has not committed half your sins; you have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed. Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have brought about for your sisters a more favourable judgement; because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.

Calling the king a sodomite is not exactly subtle, and carries with it a lot of prophetic anger, which is kind of the whole point of being a prophet. Ezekiel was using humiliation to teach humility. But back to Cardinal Mahony . . .

Mahony’s problems and confusion in Thursday’s post get worse. Much, much worse:

To be honest with you, I have not reached the point where I can actually pray for more humiliation.  I’m only at the stage of asking for the grace to endure the level of humiliation at the moment.

In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated.  In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people.  I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage–at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.

Thanks to God’s special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them.

Incredible. This is Caiaphas, asking God to forgive Jesus for blasphemy. Instead of simply standing there, Mahony might want to try listening to them. He might be moved to pray for his own forgiveness.

Let’s take a look at the call that Mahony speaks of so longingly, as expressed in the rite of ordination of a bishop from 1968. During the homily, the principal consecrator is directed to speak of the role of the bishop using these or similar words:

Through the ministry of the bishop, Christ himself continues to proclaim the Gospel and to confer the mysteries of faith on those who believe. . . .

The title of bishop is not one of honor but of function, and therefore a bishop should strive to serve rather than to rule.  Such is the counsel of the Master: the greater should behave as if he were the least, and the leader as if he were the one who serves.  Proclaim the message whether it is welcome or unwelcome; correct error with unfailing patience and teaching.  Pray and offer sacrifice for the people committed to your care and so draw every kind of grace for them from the overflowing holiness of Christ. . . .

I’m only a parish pastor, not a bishop, but somehow, I find it difficult to believe that the Gospel was being proclaimed through Mahony’s shuffling of rapists from parish to parish, or through his efforts to keep their criminal behavior away from the attention of the courts. Maybe I missed that class at seminary. Either that, or perhaps St. John’s Seminary and Catholic University of America may want their degrees back. But I digress . . .

Then come the questions of the bishop-elect, which include these:

Q: Are you resolved to show kindness and compassion in the name of the Lord to the poor and to strangers and to all who are in need? . . .

Q: Are you resolved to pray for the people of God without ceasing, and to carry out the duties of one who has the fullness of the priesthood so as to afford no grounds for reproach?

On March 19, 1975, he said “I am” in response to these questions (and others). In his actions as detailed in the 12,000 pages of documents, his own words and signatures said something else.

Mahony placed protecting the reputation of the diocese ahead of kindness and compassion for those who were raped by clergy in his charge. He placed protecting the reputation of the diocese ahead of the safety of the children of his parishes. He placed his own reputation above those he was charged to serve. He placed covering up crimes ahead of justice for those who were victims. He said “I am” with his lips on that day in 1975, but with his pen as archbishop of LA, he said something quite different.

And next week, he’ll get a chance to answer a few more questions:

A judge cleared the way Friday for a Feb. 23 deposition of the former archbishop by a lawyer for a man who alleges that a visiting Mexican priest molested him three decades ago at his Montecito Heights parish.

In a closed-door meeting, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias said Mahony could be questioned for four hours about the priest, Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera, and 25 other clergymen accused of abuse during the same time period, according to lawyers at the meeting.

Mahony has been deposed repeatedly since the late 1990s about his dealings with accused abusers, but the upcoming deposition will be the first since the release of 12,000 pages of internal church records about the abuse.

The alleged victim’s lawyer, Anthony De Marco, said he has 138 pages of archdiocese memos and records about Aguilar Rivera that were not available when Mahony was last deposed.

“It’s a vastly different examination when you have their contemporaneous notes,” he said.

It certainly is.

In Christian theology, baptism is a statement of God’s love for us, no matter what we have done or not done. If I might be so bold as to offer the Cardinal a bit of advice, he might want to lay off the whine and go back to the water. It will help turn the humiliation into humility.

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Photo of Cardinal Mahony by Shay Sowden and used under Creative Commons.

Also, h/t for the title to Eli.

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Late Late Night FDL: The Cats Bah

2013-02-17 11:57:00 (читать в оригинале)

Pepe Le Pew — The Cats Bah.  This Warner Bros Looney Tunes cartoon was released on March 20, 1954.

Directed by Chuck Jones (as Charles M. Jones). Produced by Edward Selzer (uncredited). Story by Michael Maltese. Animation by Lloyd Vaughan and Ben Washam. Backgrounds by Philip DeGuard. Layouts by Maurice Noble. Film Editing and Sound Effects Editing by Treg Brown (uncredited). Voices by Mel Blanc )Pepe Le Pew) and Bea Benaderet (Penelope’s Mistress – uncredited). Original Music by Carl W. Stalling (uncredited). Musical Direction by Carl W. Stalling (as Carl Stalling). Orchestration by Milt Franklyn (uncredited).

Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the seatback in front of ya, and aim your spitballs at the ushers please. This is Late Late Night Firedoglake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in. What’s on your mind?

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FDL Book Salon Welcomes Tom Wilber, Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortune, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale

2013-02-17 11:57:00 (читать в оригинале)

Welcome Tom Wilber (ShaleGasReview)  (Book Trailer) and Host Steve Horn (deSmogBlog.com) (FDL posts)

Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortune, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale

The title says it all, albeit just ambiguously enough to pull one in as a reader and to keep one turning the pages.

The story of “fracking,” short for hydraulic fracturing – the technical term for horizontal drilling to obtain shale oil and gas from shale rock basins nationwide – is one of fortunes of the few at the expense of the many. These costs are paid financially (think water deliveries after a groundwater contamination episode), in terms of quality of life and health, and also sometimes in terms of royalties (citizens living on houses that live “over the surface” sometimes become “shaleionaires,” as 60 Minutes put it).

Tom Wilber‘s book reads like a novel but is reported in the true spirit of an explanatory, investigative journalist. While detail-obsessed and leaving few stones unturned on the policy side of the shale oil and gas debate, Wilber – in somewhat masterful fashion – takes readers inside the lives of the Marcellus Shale’s stakeholders: citizens, citizen-journalists, oil and gas corporate executives, and activists. There is never a dull moment in the book, as Wilber seamlessly weaves fact-laden reportage into novel-like story-telling. I read the book in three sittings, as it is tough to put down once one opens it up.

Wilber’s years spent reporting on-the-ground in the Twin Tiers – the Southern Tier of NY and the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania – provide great contemporary historical context for the ongoing fracking debate in the Empire State, which now may not be decided until 2014, according to recent reporting by Reuters. Who are some of the key supporters of fracking there? Who are the detractors? That is explained in colorful detail, so colorful in fact, that after reading Wilber’s book, one feels like she’s met these characters in real life.

“Frackademia,” the “shale gas bubble,” Penn State University geologist Terry Engelder’s massive Marcellus Shale gas reserves estimate, the climate change impacts extracting/producing shale gas, the T. Boone Pickens natural gas vehicle push, tensions between grassroots activists and funded environmental NGOs – these are merely some of the myriad topics explained in-depth in the book.

While the debate over shale gas extraction has been rife with tension around the world, Wilber captures the somewhat mystical property of the Marcellus debate well. Call it east coast bias, its proximity to big media markets, what have you. When push comes to shove, the debate over the Marcellus has – for better or worse – become literally theatrical in-nature, with one New York anti-fracking group lead by Hollywood stars and music celebrities called “Artists Against Fracking.” This “theatrical nature” is well-captured by Wilber, who rather than take a side as an advocate, tells the story fairly and evenly in Joseph Pulitzer-like manner.

From the point-of-view of a corporate executive, development of the Marcellus Shale is a once-in-a-lifetime race for the literal and metaphorical gold. On the contrary, to citizens living in areas being fracked, development of the Marcellus is a worst nightmare of sorts. Wilber explains – as I’ve written before in my own work – that to the on-the-ground stakeholders, the shale gas boom is akin to a new-aged resource colonialism. One of the book’s protagonists, Victoria Switzer, describes it as an “occupation.”

While the Marcellus serves as a case study, Wilber correctly notes that stakeholders in all shale basin regions share a bond “linked…by local geology and global energy concerns. In all these shale regions, the relationships people have with the land, and with their neighbors, are as complicated and multidimensional as the topographical and geological terrain.”

As an impartial, compelling observation and novel-like story of the events of the past six+ years in New York and Pennsylvania as it pertains to development of the Marcellus Shale, the book was a true joy to read and will serve as a great resource for my work investigative reporting in the near- and long-term future. It is also a go-to source and must-read for anyone looking to learn more about the actors and debates that have lead up to the ongoing New York debate.