Saturday Male Beauty

Faded Atlantic City Casino to Chase the Pink Dollar

With New York State poised to rake in perhaps $1 billion a year following the enactment of same sex marriage, one casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey seems to be likewise hoping to benefit from pink tourism dollars. Of course, the casino's cause would be helped significantly if the New Jersey legislature were to follow New York's lead and embrace marriage equality. While states like South Carolina and Virginia make themselves as unwelcoming as possible to LGBT citizens, other states and businesses realize that religious based bigotry and intolerance are not good for the bottom line. As I have noted before, when the boyfriend and I travel, we typical seek out gay excepting destinations such as New York City, Key West, Ft. Lauderdale and Washington, D.C. - all of which equates to a financial drain from Virginia. The New York Times looks at the Resorts Casino Hotel to encourage gay guests, including a full time gay bar and drag shows. It is interesting that the hotel operator believes that gays will also attract younger visitors. Here are some highlights:
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At the Resorts Casino Hotel, the somewhat faded Boardwalk grande dame that became this city’s first casino in 1978 after New Jersey legalized the business, you can find slots and blackjack, concert posters featuring performers like Paul Anka and Wayne Newton, the de rigueur all-you-can-eat buffet and the other familiar diversions of Casinoland. But there is also a rainbow flag flying above the entryway. There is Prohibition, a new nightclub that is believed to be the first full-time gay bar at any big American casino. Across the hall is a female impersonators’ show. On the hotel’s Web site, a menu tab reads “LGBT.”
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[T]he opening of Prohibition in May was a sign that just as the city has courted various markets over the years — Asians, families and others — it is now reaching out to gay customers as a way to cope with too much competition and too few gamblers.
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“I feel like I’m doing something that needs to be done, but it’s perfect because the right thing to do is the lucrative thing to do, too,” said Dennis C. Gomes, who in December became co-owner and chief executive of the faltering casino, which he says lost $20 million last year. So far the new club has been a big hit, drawing local customers and visitors from New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
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“As a gay person, the places you could go to were almost creepy, not chic at all,” said Francois Dagenais of Montreal, a singer and dancer who has appeared in Atlantic City shows for 10 years. “We’re looking for the same thing as everyone else. We have money to spend and want to have fun. I don’t know why this didn’t happen before.”
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The idea, part of the hotel’s ’20s-themed makeover, was not just that members of the gay community were a ripe market, but that they were something of a pop culture signifier whose support would also pull in a younger, hipper audience than Resorts had been attracting.
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[S]ome experts say that Atlantic City has particular potential for gay patrons because of its beach scene, period architecture, louche history, access to urban communities from New York to Washington and even the campy resonance of the Miss America Pageant.
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At Resorts, Mr. Gomes and Mr. Ballesteros, his marketing executive, discussed whether a gay presence would turn off a general audience. They agreed that in Atlantic City at least, that train had left the station. Instead, a bigger problem might be the opposite. At the drag show one recent night, the delighted audience was mostly heterosexual couples, average age hovering around 55. “It’s been great so far,” Mr. Diorio, the server, said. “But we did have one customer who came in, took a look around and said, ‘There went our gay bar.’ ”

South Carolina: Will Economics Trump Religious Extremism?

I have written many times about the increasing correlation between a state's social conservatism -translate: religious extremism and social/cultural backwardness - and declining economic development and prosperity. South Carolina is a perfect example of this phenomenon where the extremism and intolerance of the states large numbers of far right evangelical Christians don't exactly make the state a welcoming prospect for progressive and cutting edge businesses. To the extent the state attracts jobs, it often lower paying lower skills jobs like those at Amazon’s new distribution center in Lexington County outside of Columbia. The end result is that South Carolina has one of the nation's highest unemployment rates - something that to some extent is self-inflicted in my view. Now, with the GOP primaries in the offing, GOP voters are faced with having to decide whether they will continue their Bible beating or start focusing instead on economic issues. The Washington Post looks at this coming intra-party conflict. Here are highlights (the image above is from the Post as well):
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The South Carolina Republican primary has accurately predicted the GOP presidential nominee for the past three decades, often in campaigns that revolved around guns, God and gays.
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But with South Carolina saddled with a 10 percent unemployment rate — one of the highest in the nation — the struggling economy is upending the priorities of many so-called values voters, forcing GOP candidates to rewrite their campaign playbooks.
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South Carolina’s pivotal role could be enhanced in 2012 because the state is suffering economic woes that both Iowa, with its 6 percent jobless rate, and New Hampshire, where unemployment is 4.8 percent, have managed to avoid.
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These days, the GOP candidates swinging through the state are playing up their economic credentials to appeal to such voters. Former Utah governor and ambassador Jon Huntsman was in South Carolina recently, telling voters about his business experience with his family’s chemical company.
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Meanwhile, all of the GOP candidates, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who served as a Pennsylvania senator, have promoted their conservative stances on social issues. . . . . “The Republican morality issues are still important, but they are not nearly as important as the economy,” said Chris Drummond, a GOP consultant in South Carolina.
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Like Romney, Huntsman is a Mormon. But with the state battling double-digit unemployment, some say the religious issue does not resonate as it might have in the past. “With 19 percent unemployment in Marion County, do you think I care where you go to church?” Christmas asked. Vacant tobacco warehouses and abandoned textile mills dot the landscape in Marion County, providing reminders of the area’s once-vibrant economy.
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The economic predicament in Marion County, where unemployment was high long before the recession hit, is similar in much of northeastern South Carolina, a region struggling with high unemployment, an undereducated workforce and an uncertain future.
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“This is a conservative area, a conservative state,” said Eric Fry, a high school teacher who chairs Marion County’s Republican Party. “I know people don’t want to compromise their beliefs, but with the economic situation being what it is, I know they want answers there as well.”

Under Cover Investigation Confirms Marcus Bachmann's Clinics Practice Ex-Gay Therapy

I'm sorry if of late I seem obsessed with Michele Bachmann and her lisping and mincing husband, but the two nut cases just keep doing things that make it hard to ignore their lunacy - especially given their vitriolic statements against LGBT citizens. Now, as The Nation is reporting, Truth Win's Out did an under cover investigation and has confirmed that Marcus Bachmann's "Christian counseling" clinics engage in reparative therapy - yep, the therapy that the American Psychological Association has declared to be unethical because it doesn't work and can do serious harm to patients who find themselves unable to "change." Like most of the quacks that practice this snake oil therapy, it appears Bachmann and his clinics are NOT licensed even though Minnesota law requires licensing for psychologists - which is what Bachmann holds himself out to be - family therapists, and counselors. One has to wonder what loop whole this disingenuous operation is using to avoid the state licensing requirements. And, of course, those who are so stridently anti-gay usually are the self-loathing closet cases. The obvious question is: can the country afford to have anyone who subscribes to such crazy, discredited bullshit in high office? Here are highlights from the story in The Nation:
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In the summer of 2004, Andrew Ramirez, who was just about to enter his senior year of high school, worked up the nerve to tell his family he was gay. His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. “He said it was wrong, an abomination, that it was something he would not tolerate in his house,” Ramirez recalls. A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. “He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.
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There has been a great deal of speculation that his [Marcus Bachmann] clinics, which have received $161,000 in state and federal funding, try to cure homosexuality—and the chatter has only grown louder since his comments likening gays to “barbarians” who “need to be educated” and “disciplined” surfaced in the blogosphere last week. Marcus Bachmann has denied these allegations. “That’s a false statement,” he replied when the Minneapolis City Pages asked if his clinic tried to cure gays. And until now there was no firm evidence to back these allegations up. But information obtained by The Nation suggests that Bachmann & Associates therapists do, in fact, try to change sexual orientation. It also sheds new light on the Bachmanns’ embrace of the controversial ex-gay movement and related psychological approaches, which portray homosexuality as a disease to be rooted out.
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In late June, a Truth Wins Out activist named John Becker donned two hidden cameras—one embedded in a wristwatch—and attended five treatment sessions at Bachmann’s Lake Elmo clinic. Becker, who is openly gay, presented himself as a committed Christian who was struggling with homosexuality. The video he collected seems to confirm Ramirez’s allegations that staff members at Bachmann & Associates try to change sexual orientation. Becker’s therapist (another of Marcus Bachmann’s employees) repeatedly assured him that homosexuality could be overcome. “
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To curb Becker’s gay impulses, the therapist urged him to pray and read Scripture and suggested Becker “develop” his masculinity. He also encouraged him to find a “heterosexual guy” to act as act as an AA-type sponsor. Later, he referred Becker to Outpost Ministries, a church that helps “the sexually and relationally broken”—in other words, homosexuals—“find healing and restoration through relationship with Jesus Christ.”
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Both Bachmann & Associates and the Bachmann campaign declined to comment for this story, though in the past Marcus Bachmann has insisted his clinics don’t push people to change their sexual orientation. “If someone comes in a homosexual and they want to stay a homosexual, I don’t have a problem with that,” he told the Minneapolis City Pages. Nevertheless, the techniques the therapist at his Lake Elmo clinic used were typical of so-called reparative therapies, which cast homosexuality as a mental disorder and see conversion to heterosexuality as the only healthy outcome.
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[T]he [APA] group concluded that there was scant evidence that sexual orientation could be changed. What’s more, it found that attempting to do so could cause depression and suicidal tendencies among patients. Based on these findings, in 2009 the APA voted to repudiate reparative therapy by a margin of 125 to 4.
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The obvious conclusions - beside the fact that BOTH Bachmann's are crazy - are (1)that Marcus Bachmann is a liar when it comes to telling the truth about his ex-gay therapy practices, and (2) state licensing requirements need to be imposed on quack operations like Bachmann's clinics to protect the public.

More Friday Male Beauty

Pentagon suspends DADTand Accepts Applications from Gays

Anyone remotely close to to Elaine Donnelly or Tony Perkins when they get this news had best be wearing foul weather gear - the spittle must be flying by the bucket full! What is the news? The Pentagon has announced that it has suspended any more discharges under DADT in the wake of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Better yet - assuming one is not a Christofascist - is that the military will begin accepting applications from prospective recruits who identify themselves as openly gay. What on earth will Ms. Donnelly and her bogus organization, the Center for Military Readiness, do to shake money from the pockets of the ignorant and bigoted. The Army Times has details on the Pentagon's announcement. Here are some highlights:

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The Pentagon has ordered a halt to all separations of gay troops under “don’t ask, don’t tell” and will begin accepting applications from prospective recruits who identify themselves as homosexuals.
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The moratorium issued Friday came after a ruling Wednesday by a federal appeals court in California ordering the Defense Department to immediately stop enforcing the law. The court said the law is unconstitutional because it treats gay Americans differently under the law.
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Meanwhile, defense officials will continue to prepare for the law’s formal repeal, which Congress approved in December. . . . . Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he expected certification to occur in late July or early August.
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In October, the Pentagon raised the bar for separation of gay troops by requiring the civilian service secretaries and the Pentagon’s top lawyer to approve any separation. Since then, four troops have been separated under the law.

Bachmann Pledges to Ban Porn; Says Homosexuality is a Choice

Erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann seems Hell bent to provide additional proof that she's a religious fanatic nutcase. Think Progress is reporting that Bachmann has signed a pledge created by THE FAMiLY LEADER, an intensely anti-gay Chrisitanist group in Iowa that helped spearhead the removal of three justices from the Iowa Supreme Court. The utter batshitery contained the pledge goes on and on and, while perhaps playing well with the Kool-Aid drinking Christianist set, ought to scare the Hell out of voters still tethered to reality who oppose a Christian Taliban theocracy in this country. Should other GOP candidates sign the pledge, it will be yet further proof that the Republican Party is now an anti-knowledge sectarian extremist party. As Think Progress notes:
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By signing the pledge Bachmann “vows” to “uphold the institution of marriage as only between one man and one woman” by committing herself to 14 specifics steps. The ninth step calls for the banning of “all forms” of pornography. The pledge also states that homosexuality is both a choice and a health risk.

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The full details of the pledge signed by Bachman can be found here. Here are some highlights of the religious based lunacy:

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HOMOSEXUALITY IS A CHOICE: The preface to the pledge reads, “Social protections…have been evaporating as we have collectively ‘debased the currency’ of marriage…in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclination are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health.” Footnote 8 reiterates this notion.

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HOMOSEXUALITY IS LIKE POLYGAMY, ADULTERY, POLYANDRY: Vow 4 requires the candidate to pledge “Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage…through statutory, bureaucratic, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex.”

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PORNOGRAPHY SHOULD BE BANNED: Vow 9 stipulates that the candidate must “support human protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” and protect them from “seduction into promiscuity and all forms of pornography…and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.”

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REJECT SHARIA ISLAM: Vow 11 requires the candidate to reject Sharia law.

Friday Male Beauty

Quote of the Day - John Aravosis

Over at America Blog Gay John Aravosis asks the question that I often raise on this blog in terms of why does anyone listen to anything the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy says on any issues of supposed morality given the self-displayed moral bankruptcy of these nasty men in dresses? Here's John's phrasing of the question:

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Once again it must be asked, why do we care what people who embraced the rape of children think about anything? They're the ones who should be banned from going anywhere within 1000 feet of a child.

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John asked this question in reaction to a Christian Post story about Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio directing all Catholic churches and schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn to ban state lawmakers who voted for gay marriage in New York.

Will the Spread of Gay Marriage Reduce "Mixed" Marriages With Straights?

One of the major points of disgust I have with the bogus "ex-gay" agenda pushed by Christianist organizations and so-called reparative therapy "ministries" is that they do not seem to give a tinkers damn about the straight spouses that knowingly or unknowingly find themselves married to a closeted gay or lesbian. The agenda is all about "changing" the gay or lesbian spouse straight and the favorite proof of the "ex-gay" conversion is marriage to an opposite sex spouse. The collateral damage that is almost guaranteed to flow to the straight spouse and any children of the marriage when it ends means nothing to the likes of the folks at Exodus International.
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Also missing from the mix is any concern that the straight spouse marrying an "ex-gay" has been cheated out of having a marriage to someone who is heterosexual even if the closeted LGBT spouse remains faithful and remains in the marriage. No, sadly, the political agenda of the Christianists to be able to parade "ex-gays" before the public, legislators and judges in their quest to denigrate and marginalize LGBT rights trumps all else. It's disgusting and, to me, demonstrates the utter moral bankruptcy of ex-gay proponents. People like, it appears, Marcus Bachmann, the husband of the seriously untethered Michele Bachmann.. A column in Huffington Post looks at how the spread of gay marriage may reduce these unfortunate marriages. Here are highlights:
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Whether straight men and women know it or not, New York's new Gay Marriage Act will have an enormous impact on them. The reason? It will eliminate or at least drastically reduce the likelihood of gays attempting to conceal or even change their orientation through heterosexual marriage.
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In the past, . . . . most lesbians and gay men married opposite-gender spouses and tried as best they could to fit into the heterosexual mould their society expected, not infrequently indulging in clandestine gay liaisons.
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These are the marriages that the Gay Marriage Act will mostly end. And some of its most fervent supporters have been the heterosexual spouses of closeted homosexuals. These gay husbands and their wives and ex-wives, and lesbian wives and their husbands and ex-husbands number in the millions, and number in the millions -- between 1.7 and 3.4 million -- and are increasingly speaking out about how their experience has affected them personally.
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The Straight Spouse Network, for instance, use a virtual community "for all the millions of us who find that we are married or in a long term relationship with someone who we find out is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or just not sure about that." Television's Fran Drescher's show Happily Divorced is inspired by her real-life experience as a straight woman whose husband reveals, post-divorce, that he is gay.
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But the right to gay marriage will reduce but not eliminate these marriages; only eradicating homophobia will do that. There remains a chasm between official policy and the realities of personal and social life: parental rejection, social ostracism or mockery, and physical danger that includes being bashed as a "fag." Coming out can still be perilous, and many young gays prefer the safety of being closeted.
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For the first time in history, young people are growing up in the presence of legally sanctioned gay marriage (and divorce), an experience that will influence how they shape their lives in a world that is marching away from homophobia and allowing gays and lesbians to unite in marriage, to raise their children, and to expect to receive the same rights and to be subject to the same obligations as heterosexual spouses. As more gay men and women decide to marry, they will shore up the very institution whose decline the wider society mourns.

More Thursday Male Beauty

FRC: Pray For The Criminalization Of Homosexuality

I've talked before about the bizarre upside down morality of the Christian Right which has taken a religion that per the Gospels themselves should focus on love of neighbor and forgiveness of others and turned it instead into and unrelenting message of hatred. Hatred of gays, hatred of blacks, hatred of Hispanics, hatred of immigrants - indeed, hatred of just about everyone but for the cadre of haters themselves. Among those leading the charge with the banner of hatred is Family Research Council ("FRC") which time and time again proves the Southern Poverty Law Center 100% on target when it added to FRC to its list of registered hate groups. FRC latest missive of hate is a call for its Kool-Aid drinking followers to basically pray for the criminalization of homosexuality. Never mind the destroyed lives - and murders - such laws produce. Right Wing Watch has details on this foul "call to prayer." Here are details:
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In the Family Research Council’s latest prayer target list, the organization asks people to pray for countries, Malawi in particular, that have laws criminalizing sodomy. The FRC believes that they are facing unfair pressure from the U.S. to decriminalize homosexuality, and accuses the Obama administration of “pushing homosexuality, using taxpayer dollars.” According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Malawi is one of more than 70 countries that outlaw “same-sex relations between consenting adults” and earlier this year “Malawi enacted a law criminalizing homosexuality among women. Homosexuality is already illegal for men in that county. If convicted, a defendant could receive up to five years’ imprisonment.” Last year, a gay couple in Malawi was sentenced to fourteen years in jail.
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The FRC’s support of policies like Malawi’s should come as no surprise, as the group backs the criminalization of homosexuality and has previously criticized the State Department for calling on countries to decriminalize homosexuality. Now, the FRC wants people to pray that God “give targeted nations courage to withstand U.S. coercion” and “forgive us for this evil”: May God restrain the Obama administration from promoting the LGBT agenda at home and abroad. May He give targeted nations courage to withstand U.S. coercion! Forgive us for this evil (Ps 94:16; Is 3:9-15; Jer 7:3-11; Lk 17:2; Rom 1:32; Jas 3:13-18; Jude 7).
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And people wonder why Christianity is dying in educated portions of the world! FRC makes the case for putting as much distance as possible between one's self and Christianity. Meanwhile, where are the "good Christians"? Once again yielding the field to the hate merchants with little more than a whimper. The Christianists at FRC are guilty of sins of commission. The "good Christians" by their silence are guilty of sins of omission.

National Catholic Reporter Slams Catholic Bishops and Hierarchy

As a former Catholic, I pretty much gave up on any hope that the Roman Catholic Church would ever reform itself, cease its anti-gay jihad and, most importantly, sack those in the Church hierarchy who bore responsibility for enabling and/or protection predator priest who sexually abused children and youths. For the most part my pessimism and decision to "vote with my feet" has been proven totally justified. Nonetheless, it is nice on occasion to see some who have remained in the Church to verbally bitch slap the bishops and hierarchy as is so justly deserved. Not, of course, that such candor will have much chance of changing the Church's feudal governance structure. In its main editorial, the National Catholic Reporter laid into the New York bishops for their nastiness on the New York marriage equality vote as well as the utter collapse of the Church's moral authority in the wake of the handling of the sex abuse scandal. Here are some editorial highlights:
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The vote approving same-sex marriage in New York is the latest and most glaring confirmation of some gloomy news for the Catholic church in the United States, and it’s not that gays have achieved the right to marry. Rather, affirmed in the recent vote is the disturbing reality that the Catholic hierarchy has lost most of its credibility with the wider culture on matters of sexuality and personal morality, just as it has lost its authority within the Catholic community on the same issues.
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[T]here are reasons we think the bishops’ hyperbolic reaction to laws such as that enacted in New York are not only wrong-headed but counterproductive. First, even if bishops retained the stature they once had in the wider culture, it is evident in polls and politicians’ votes that neither most of the Catholic world nor the wider culture buys the church’s teaching that homosexuals are disordered and are thus relegated to sexless lives in order to remain in the Christian community.
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To parents of a gay child, the idea that a group of men can claim to know the mind of God so perfectly that they can proclaim with unyielding certainty that God deems a significant portion of creation “disordered” is absurd. The label is not only demeaning but to contemporary Christians has no resonance with the heart of the Gospel.
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Second, even if the bishops had a persuasive case to make and the legislative tools at their disposal, their public conduct in recent years -- wholesale excommunications, railing at politicians, denial of honorary degrees and speaking platforms at Catholic institutions, using the Eucharist as a political bludgeon, refusing to entertain any questions or dissenting opinions, and engaging in open warfare with the community’s thinkers as well as those, especially women, who have loyally served the church -- has resulted in a kind of episcopal caricature, the common scolds of the religion world, the caustic party of “no.”
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The larger problem for the hierarchy, of course,is not persuading the secular culture of its point of view on sacramental marriage, but persuading its own adherents, and particularly young Catholics who now tend to drift off in scores before adulthood, that staying attached to the church is a compelling good, that the church is in fact relevant and will draw them closer to Christ and thus the freedom and fullness of a life of faith.
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The bishops have little credibility in the wider culture and diminished authority within the church because in the case of sexual violence against young people by members of their clerical culture, they responded in ways that any reasonable and healthy segment of society would have considered disdainful.
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In reaction to the marriage vote, Dolan stretched to call up the specter of what remains of the Red menace. On his blog he wrote that in China and North Korea “government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values and natural law.” In those countries, he says, government dictates the size of families, who can live and die, and what defines marriage. “Please, not here!” he begs. The comparison, of course, is absurd on its face, a kind of hysteria that demands that someone listen when so few are.
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The vote in New York sends a strong message to Catholic leadership. The danger is not in the vote itself. The danger they face is far deeper -- a crisis of leadership and authority for which they have only themselves to blame.

Thursday Male Beauty

The Depressing Lack of LGBT Employment Protections

Click map to enlarge.

As the map above from Think Progress reveals, it is still dangerous to be an LGBT employee in the vast majority of states (the map doesn't reflect recent victories for transgender protections in Hawaii, Nevada, and just yesterday, Connecticut). What makes the issue so disturbing is that a vast majority of voters believe that LGBT employees enjoy non-discrimination protections when in fact we do not. Bishop Robinson sees supporting LGBT equality as a matter of Christian principle and has stated the following:

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The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are filled with admonitions that we will be judged by the way we treat our most vulnerable members. For Christians and Jews, God is described as having a special concern for the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable. We are morally bound to take special care to protect those who are so marginalized. I believe that in our time, it is gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people who are the marginalized deserving of civil protections. Surely, in this great nation, we can at least do that much.

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Unfortunately, until special deference and privileges cease to be given to the most hate-filled and intolerant form of Christianity practiced by the modern day Pharisees of the Christian Right, what Robinson calls for will not happen. Certainly not in a hater's paradise like Virginia.

The Three Fundamentalisms of the American Far Right

A column in Salon follows the evolution of the far right in America from the post WWII years through today analyzes how we've come to such batshit craziness and irrationality which has now taken over the Republican Party for the most part. The irony in the piece is that it looks at the evolution - using a concept that much of the far right refuses to believe in despite scientific evidence to support evolution. But then, that's part and parcel with the fundamentalism that has replaced facts and reason. Just look at the GOP Congressional leadership to see how little objective facts and reasoning have evaporated from the scene in the GOP. Much of the drift to irrational insanity not surprisingly flows from the fundamentalism and ignorance by choice of the Christianist faction within the GOP which in my view is like a metastasizing cancer. Here are some highlights:
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In contradiction to the hostility to Darwinism shared by many of its constituents, the American right is evolving rapidly before our eyes. The project of creating an American version of Burkean conservatism has collapsed. What has replaced it is best described as triple fundamentalism -- a synthesis of Biblical fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism.
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Following World War II, the American right was a miscellany of marginal, embittered subcultures -- anti-New Dealers, isolationists, paranoid anticommunists, anti-semites and white supremacists. Russell Kirk and others associated with William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review sought to Americanize a version of high-toned British Burkean conservatism.
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The term "fundamentalism" originated in the early twentieth century as a description of reactionary evangelical Protestants in the U.S. who rejected liberal Protestantism and modern evolutionary science and insisted on the inerrancy of the Bible. . . . . once white Southerners captured the Republican party and the conservative movement, the High Church right that found Kirk and Buckley among its college of cardinals gave way to the political equivalent of the Foot-Washin’ Baptists.
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The increasingly-Southernized American Right has transferred the fundamentalist Protestant mentality from the sphere of religion to the spheres of law and the economy. Protestant fundamentalism is now joined by constitutional fundamentalism and market fundamentalism.
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In all three cases, the pattern is the same. There is the eternal Truth that never varies -- the will of God, the principles of the Founding Fathers, the so-called laws of the free market. There are the scriptures which explain the eternal truths -- the King James Bible, in the case of religious fundamentalism, the Constitution or the Federalist Papers, in the case of constitutional fundamentalism, and Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in the case of market fundamentalism . . .
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History, to the fundamentalist mind, is a story of original perfection, followed by betrayal and restoration. The early Christian church was perfect; it was corrupted and betrayed by medieval Catholicism; and it was restored to its original purity by radical Protestant reformers. In the same way, the American constitution was not a flawed compromise among rival states and factions, to be improved by later amendment, but a document of superhuman wisdom, created in a kind of secular Pentecost at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.
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Modern American market fundamentalism, too, is recognizably modeled on the fundamentalist Protestant version of church history . . . . the market fundamentalists pretend that the U.S. was governed by the laws of the market until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal replaced capitalism with socialism . . .
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Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed. But if your sect alone understands the True Religion and the True Constitution and the Laws of the Market, then there is no point in debate. All those who disagree with you are heretics, to be defeated, whether or not they are converted.
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The era of triple fundamentalism on the American right is bound to come to an end. Sooner or later, dogmatism and reality will collide, and it is not reality that will crumple like tinfoil. The only question is how much damage will be done to the American polity before the revolution of the saints fizzles out.
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As I've noted often before, the extreme fundamentalism that we are seeing suggests to me severe emotional and psychological issues on the part of adherents who are absolutely terrified of (i) having to exercise independent thought and analysis and (ii) having their house of cards religious beliefs exposed as lies. This mental illness if you will makes members of the far right perfect victims for demagogues both in the pulpit and in Congress.

More Wednesday Male Beauty

Ninth Circuit Finally Halts DADT Enforcement

Better late than never as the saying goes. Today, the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the stay that it had imposed to block the world wide injunction that was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States which blocked enforcement of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Frankly, the stay should never have been issued in my opinion. The immediate result is that the U. S. military must immediately cease enforcement of DADT while the wait continues for the Department of Defense and the White House to deliver the certifications needed to finally repeal DADT. The order lifting the stay can be found here. No doubt the Christo-fascists will have yet another conniption fit and whine about judicial tyranny. Metro Weekly has coverage on this development. Here are highlights:
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In an order issued by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips's judgment halting the worldwide enforcement of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as a result of her decision in Log Cabin Republicans v. United States has been put back in effect.
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DADT cannot be enforced, per the order, unless the government gets a stay of the order from either the full Ninth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court pending an appeal of today's decision.
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The three-judge panel -- Judges Alex Kozinski, Kim Wardlaw and Richard Paez -- decided to lift the appellate court's earlier stay of Phillips's order pending the appeal of the LCR case because, the judges write, "The circumstances and balance of hardships have changed, and appellants/cross-appellees can no longer satisfy the demanding standard for issuance of a stay."
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Among the circumstances cited by the court are the July 1 filing in Karen Golinski's federal case seeking health insurance benefits for her wife and the related earlier Feb. 23 letter from Attorney General Eric Holder declaring that he and President Barack Obama had decided that heightened scrutiny applies to classifications -- such as DADT.
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The judges also note that "the process of repealing Section 654 [-- the DADT law --] is well underway, and the preponderance of the armed forces are expected to have been trained by mid-summer." Smith echoed this fact, writing to Metro Weekly, "[I]mplementation of the DADT repeal voted by the Congress and signed in to law by the President last December is proceeding smoothly, is well underway, and certification is just weeks away."
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In addition to lifting the stay, the Ninth Circuit set arguments on the appeal of the merits of the LCR case itself -- as opposed to the stay of Phillips's order pending the appeal, which was what the judges altered today -- for the week of Aug. 29. White House and Justice Department spokespersons did not respond to requests for comment.

Michele and Marcus Bachmann - More and More Questions

The questions about Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and the extremist anti-gay views she shares with her husband, Marcus Bachmann, continue to multiply. Marcus Bachmann markets himself as a psychologist who provides "Christian counseling" at his practice, Bachmann & Associates. The Washington Post did a lengthy piece on July 6, 2011, on both Bachmann's history of anti-gay extremism and their joined at the hip mentality of opposing any and all civil rights for LGBT Americans. Pam Spaulding chimed into the mix a post raising serious ethical issues that seem to surround Marcus Bachmann's "Christian Counseling" practice in Lake Elmo and Burnsville, Minnesota. Adding even more fuel to the fire is Think Progress' story of Michelle Bachmann's 2004 endorsement of Focus on the Families utterly bogus and, in the view of the American Psychological Association's ("APA") view, unethical ex-gay ministry, Love Wins Out. While both Bachmann's are dodging questions on whether Bachmann & Associates offers ex-gay "reparative therapy" a lot of questions exist as to (1) the nature of Marcus Bachmann's credentials and (2) how he operates his practice without being licensed. A perusal of the Minnesota Revised Statutes reveals that state licensing is required for (1) psychologists, (2) marriage and family therapists, and (3) professional counselors. Yet, by all reports Marcus Bachmann holds no license. The obvious questions are how and why? Is this the type of "expert" Michele Bachmann would utilize were she to be elected to high office?

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But Bachmann's lack of a license to practice isn't the only irregularity surrounding Marcus Bachmann professional qualifications. He apparently prefers to be referred to as "Dr. Bachmann." Coincidentally, from my years of following "family values" organizations, affixing "Dr." in front a supposed "expert's" name is a favored tactic to add credibility. The Post story and others indicate that Bachmann received his PhD from Union Graduate Institute in Ohio. While it's an apparently legally created institution, it's doctoral program in Psychology is NOT accredited by the APA which means its degree holders cannot be licensed in a number of states. Moreover, it specializes in limited residence and distance learning programs. That's right, it is NOT a traditional university offering typical doctoral education program.
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Given these unanswered questions about Marcus Bachmann's practice and his unlicensed status, these thoughts raised in Pam Spaulding's post are most relevant:
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Someone should publicly ask him to provide a copy of the informed consent that he has patients seeking to undergo "ex-gay" therapy sign. Informed consent is a legal procedure to ensure that a patient or client knows all of the risks and costs involved in a treatment. The elements of informed consents include informing the client of the nature of the treatment, possible alternative treatments, and the potential risks and benefits of the treatment.
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For ex-gay therapy, the informed consent should tell a patient that "ex-gay" therapy is not proven, is considered "experimental", is not supported by research, that no medical or mental health association endorses it, that it could have harmful side effects including depression and suicidal ideation, and that change to heterosexuality is not likely. A good informed consent should also list alternative treatments and options, including learning to live life as a celibate homosexual or seeking gay affirmative therapy.
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A good informed consent would inform a potential client that she/he could spend years and tens of thousands of dollars seeking "change" but would most likely continue to experience homosexual attractions for the rest of his/her life.
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As for specifics of Michele and Marcus Bachmann's virulent anti-gay track records, here are highlights from the Washington Post story:
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Michele Bachmann has called gay marriage “probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, 30 years.” In 2005, she ran screaming from a bathroom at a constituent forum, claiming that a lesbian had attempted to keep her there against her will. (The woman said she was merely questioning Bachmann about her position on gay marriage.) As a state senator, she was seen crouching behind hedges to observe a gay rights rally. (She has explained that she was checking the turnout.) Dr. Bachmann’s views on homosexuality have likewise earned him the ire of gay activists and liberal critics.
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The Bachmann campaign declined to specifically address whether the couple’s clinic, set back amid serene ponds in an office park gauzy with floating dandelion seeds, engages in the practice of reparative therapy.
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Both Bachmanns have warned that a greater acceptance of homosexuality could have grave social consequences. . . . In Dr. Bachmann’s interview with Point of View talk radio in 2010, he said that parents and authority figures have a responsibility not to allow homosexual feelings “to move into action steps” and warned that the rate of homosexuality in public schools would increase if it became tolerated with “full, wide-open doors.” Both Bachmanns have been supportive of Janet Boynes, the author of “Called Out: A Former Lesbian’s Discovery of Freedom.”
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Think Progress adds this to the already disturbing picture of this frightening couple:
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In 2004, as ex-gay proponents “Love Won Out” prepared to hold their annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota for those “struggling with unwanted homosexuality,” Bachmann not only lent a quote for the group’s press release but also “opened the conference with a greeting and blessing.”
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Yes, criticism of Bachmann and her husband may rally the delusional elements of the GOP base to rally to he cause. However, it is critical that moderates and independents realize just how crazy and extreme Bachmann and her husband are in the beliefs and policy towards civil rights for all citizens.

Wednesday Male Beauty

Has the GOP Ceased to Be Normal?

The caption of this post is the question that David Brooks - hardly a flaming liberal by any definition - ask in a op-ed in the New York Times. Brooks takes a good look at the extremism and utter disregard for facts and/or the consequences of the fanaticism that are the hallmarks of a political party that once prided itself on reason and deliberative decision making. Many old school Republicans would be horrified to see what they party has become under the puppet strings of religious extremists, Tea Party demagogues and a leadership that doesn't give a damn about the good of the country. Yes, there are still a few sane voices to be heard, but I truly do not know how they can bring the party back to the world of the rational world where objective facts matter. Here are highlights from Brooks' column:
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If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
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A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
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This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers. But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no. The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.
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The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor. The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name.
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Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too. The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.
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If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right.

Will Obama's Failure to Demand a Reckoning On the Part of Wall Street Doom His Re-election?

Since his departure, I've missed Frank Rich's column's in the New York Time. Now, in New York Magazine Rich has another must read column that takes Barack Obama to task for his refusal/failure to demand consequences from those who drove the USA into the Great Recessions through their greed and wanton carelessness: Wall Street and the financial industry. These interests have been largely bailed out at taxpayer expense, have shared little or nothing with homeowners and average Americans, and are among those reaping higher and higher incomes while the rest of us face income declines or outright unemployment. I agree with Rich's analysis. Sadly, I do not believe that Obama has the backbone to do what is needed and to properly use the pulpit of the presidency to take on the disingenuous GOP. Here are some highlights:

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What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”
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As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers. The Justice Department’s bally­hooed Operation Broken Trust has broken still more trust by chasing mainly low-echelon, one-off Madoff wannabes.
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Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and ­cashiered employees were left with the bills. . . . . Rather than purge the crash’s crimes, Wall Street’s leaders are sticking to their alibi: Everyone was guilty of fomenting this “perfect storm,” and so no one is. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, and ­Masters of the Universe swagger is back.
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As good times roar back for corporate America, it’s bad enough that CEOs are collectively sitting on some $1.9 trillion in cash—much of it parked out of the IRS’s reach overseas—instead of hiring. . . . But what’s most galling is how many of these executives are sore winners, crying all the way to Palm Beach while raking in record profits and paying some of the lowest tax rates over the past 50 years.
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Obama can win reelection without carrying 10021 or Greenwich in any case. The bigger political problem is that a far larger share of the American electorate views him as a tool of the very fat-cat elite that despises him. Given Obama’s humble background, his history as a mostly liberal Democrat, and his famous résumé as a community organizer, this would also seem a reach. But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature.
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He stocked his administration with brilliant personnel linked to the bubble: liberals, and especially Ivy League liberals. Nearly three years on, they have taken a toll both on the White House’s image and its policies. Obama arrives at his reelection campaign not merely with a weak performance on Wall Street crime enforcement and reform but also with a scattershot record (at best) of focusing on the main concern of Main Street: joblessness.
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His failure to push back against the financial sector, sparing it any responsibility for the economy it tanked, empowered it to roll over his agenda with its own. He has come across as favoring the financial elite over the stranded middle class even if, in his heart of hearts, he does not.
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By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama’s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical-­industry operatives.)
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Obama is the chief executive. It’s his fault, no one else’s, that he seems diffident about the unemployed. Each time there’s a jolt in the jobless numbers, he and his surrogates compound that profile by farcically reshuffling the same clichés, from “stuck in a ditch” to “headwinds” (first used by Geithner in March 2009—retire it already!) to “bumps in the road.”
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There’s not much Obama can do to alter the economy by 2012, given the debt-ceiling fight, the long campaign, and nihilistic Capitol Hill antagonists opposed to any government spending that might create jobs and, by extension, help Obama keep his own. But the central question before the nation couldn’t be clearer: Who pays? The taxpayers bailed out the elite; now it’s the elite’s turn to return the favor. Massive cuts to the safety net combined with scant sacrifice from those at the top is wrong ethically and politically. It is, in the truest sense, un-American. . . . You have to wonder why he [Obama] isn’t seizing the moment to articulate and fight for the big picture instead of playing a lose-lose game of rope-a-dope with the Republicans on their budgetary turf.
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To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years. The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation—so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope—would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.