New MBC/Wall Street Journal Poll: 0 Percent of Blacks for Mitt Romney

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has yielded results that ought to have been foreseen by anyone rational and sentient: 0% of black Americans are supporting the Romney/Ryan ticket.  Frankly, the results should come as no surprise because a black American voting for any Republican candidate in today's GOP is akin to a Jew voting for Hitler and the Nazi Party or a black voting for a KKK candidate.  Only a lunatic or a complete idiot would vote that way.  And black voters are confirming that they are not the idiots that the GOP and its allies like the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") take them to be.    Here are highlights from Politico:

President Barack Obama continues to beat Mitt Romney among African American voters with a staggering 94 percent to 0 percent lead, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll — which gives Obama and Vice President Joe Biden a small lead over Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan — shows Obama has a massive lead over his Republican rival in the key political base of African-American voters, NBCNews.com reported.

Obama also beats Romney among Latinos, voters under 35 and women, while Romney does better than Obama with whites, rural voters and seniors.

While it is heartening to see that the cited demographic groups are not falling for disingenuous GOP lies, on the other hand, it is disheartening to see how pathetic American politics have become.  A post at Shakerville.com sums up things well:

 It may be tempting for white progressives to laugh at the fact that Romney is polling at 0% among a significant US demographic, but, for real, that shit isn't funny. It's tragic. The Republican Party has made disenfranchising African-American voters, failing to serve African-American communities via their garbage policies, and using race and class (the latter inextricably tied to the former in the US) as a wedge issue to win elections, for decades.

That virtually all African-Americans feel, and rightly so, that voting Republican is not remotely an option for them means that, in a country already gridlocked and polarized and totally fucked by an entrenched two-party system that increasingly benefits no one but the One Percent and Big Business, African-Americans aren't even left with the shitty choice between two shitty parties, but the option to vote for the one party that is slightly less shitty or not voting at all.

Catholic Bishops Begin to Demand Loyalty Oaths. Is the Nazi Salute Next?

So much for freedom of conscience in a growing number of Roman Catholic dioceses, including the nearby Arlington Diocese that encompasses northern and parts of eastern Virginia.  Even volunteers are being demanded to sign onto a loyalty oath where they submit “of will and intellect” to all of the teachings of church leaders. The Catholic Church has always operated like a feudal dictatorship, but now the bishops and the Vatican want a conformity to their orders and perverted teachings that looks like something out of the Spanish Inquisition.  Given that Benedict XVI ran the modern day Inquisition - that was conveniently renamed to avoid the less than positive connotations of the organization's prior name - for roughly two decades, this development should not come as any surprise.  Of course, the bishops' mandate is that Catholics follow all Church teachings, including the condemnation of gays and contraception.  The move comes to late it would seem since a majority of Catholics approve of same sex marriage and over 90% of Catholic women use contraception.  Hopefully, this move will drive even more Catholics from the Church.  The Washington Post looks at this Inquisition mind set.  Here are highlights:

Last month, Riley joined at least four other Sunday school teachers and resigned from her post at St. Ann’s parish after a letter arrived at her home requiring her — and all teachers in the Arlington Catholic Diocese — to submit “of will and intellect” to all of the teachings of church leaders.

The Arlington Diocese, which includes nearly a half-million Catholics across northern and eastern Virginia, is one of a small but growing number that are starting to demand fidelity oaths. The oaths reflect a churchwide push in recent years to revive orthodoxy that has sharply divided Catholics.

Such oaths are not new for priests or nuns but extend now in some places to people like volunteer Sunday school teachers as well as workers at Catholic hospitals and parish offices.

One in Baker, Ore., reiterates the sinfulness of abortion and says, “I do not recognize the legitimacy of anyone’s claim to a moral right to form their own conscience in this matter.” One in Oakland, Calif., requires leaders of a group doing outreach to gay and lesbian Catholics to say they “affirm and believe” official church teaching on marriage, hell and chastity.

The Arlington “profession of faith” asks teachers to commit to “believe everything” the bishops characterize as divinely revealed, and Arlington’s top doctrine official said it would include things like the bishops’ recent campaign against a White House mandate that most employers offer contraception coverage. Critics consider the mandate a violation of religious freedom.

[F]or some, particularly more liberal Catholics, the oaths are an alarming effort to stamp out debate in the church at a time when it is bleeding members and clergy in the West. They note that church leaders’ views have changed over the centuries on various subjects, including contraception.

“I’m just shocked, I can’t believe they’re asking me to sign this,” said Riley, who said she may keep her own children out of the parish education program in the fall. “The bishops are human, and sometimes their judgment is not God’s judgment.

Zagarri said the oath was a “slap in the face” to Catholics who have remained active and close to the church despite controversies.   .   .   .   . in my view only a person who is willing to abandon her own reason and judgment, or who is willing to go against the dictates of her own conscience, can agree to sign such a document,” she wrote to Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde.

The Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, who heads the leadership program for Catholic educators at the University of Notre Dame, said many bishops “are in a pickle.” They want Catholic institutions to be staffed by people who not only teach what the church teaches but whose “whole life will bear witness.”

Nuzzi said he keeps a photo on his desk from the 1940s that shows all the German bishops in their garb, doing the Nazi salute.  “I keep it there to remind people who say to do everything the Church says, that their wisdom has limitations, too.”

One has to wonder what's next in this totalitarian batshitery: a revival of the auto de fe?  Oh, and does the loyalty oath mean one has to support the enabling of and cover ups for child rapist priests?

Pope Benedict XVI Rehabilitates Holocaust Denier - Update II

I have posted twice - most recently here - about the Nazi Pope's rehabilitation of extreme far right Bishop Richard Williamson who denies that the Holocaust occurred and claims that there were no Nazi gas chambers. It was on January 27, 1945 that Allied troops liberated Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp. For those of us who live in the real world and not some parallel universe like Papa Ratzi and the rest of the Vatican leadership, here are some photographs from Civil Commotion that remind us of what really happened. I guess Williamson thinks these photos were created via photo shop. The Roman Catholic Church leadership has truly become a horrible institution.

Auschwitz corpses

Auschwitz gas chamber

Nazi Like Mentality of Blaming the Victim

It was only a matter of time before other nutcases picked up the storyline being put out by MassResistance based on the recently released Massachusetts Department of Health report that I mentioned the other day. Now a Florida doctor, Dr. Richard Swier, is suggesting that since LGBT individuals reported - remember, this was a self reporting survey and NOT a controlled clinical study - higher incidences of certain health issues, the solution is to "eliminate" the number of gays. Here's what Herr Doctor had to say:

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Researchers found that in many cases the disparities were even greater for bisexuals than for gay/lesbians when compared with their heterosexual counterparts. Dr. Kerith Conron, Research Fellow, Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the report, said, "This report identifies major health disparities faced by lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. Bisexuals particularly face greater health disparities in the areas of mental health and violence victimization. Specific interventions should be developed to work with the bisexual population in these areas.

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"Health officials also hope that the report will stimulate further study on ways to reduce and eliminate health disparities faced by gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

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For the full study go here.

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Reduce and eliminate health disparities? How about we eliminate gay, lesbian and bisexual behavior? Perhaps the Department of Health, Governor and Legislature should create strategies to reduce the number of gays, lesbians and bisexuals. That would solve this health crisis. Perhaps the media will give this lifestyle the same negative publicity they give smoking and obesity.

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Hmm, let me see. A number of reports have shown Southern Baptists to have the highest obesity rate of any denomination and that evangelical Christians tend to have lower education/intelligence levels. Applying Herr Doctor's analysis, does that mean we would be wise to "eliminate" the number of Southern Baptists and evangelical Christians? (I know, it is an attractive concept) One of the most hypocritical things the Christianists do is to unrelentingly make life a living Hell as possible for LGBT citizens and then condemn us for the mental health and emotional consequences of their jihad. Since sexual orientation is not a choice and appears to be biological/genetic, how would Herr Doctor propose to reduce the number of LGBT individuals? I can think of only one way - these folks are truly hateful.

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Here's more information on Herr Doctor via Matt Comer:

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Swier is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. He currently serves on the board of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County and an advisory committee of the county school system. In the past, Swier has twice chaired the Sarasota Better Business Council and once sat on the board of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce. He is the president of the Sarasota County Veterans Commission and was appointed chairman of the Sarasota National Cemetery Advisory Committee by Republican Congressman Vern Buchanan.

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Looks to me like Herr Swier needs to be removed from any involvement with the public school system in light of his Nazi like mentality. One can only shudder at the atmosphere that he must seek to create for LGBT students.

Another Face of Hate and Evil

I have long known that James Dobson - who pretends to be some harmless grandfather figure on his broadcasts - is a leading homophobe and hate merchant. Moreover, the man has no regard for the truthful and has turned the Gospel message into a vile message of hate and division. However, now, even this disingenuous, power mad, money hungry and evil fraud has out done himself in terms of trying to ratchet up hatred against LGBT citizens. Dobson has issued a an anti-Obama letter - I want to know if it is via Focus on the Family proper or not because if it is, perhaps the IRS needs to revisit its tax exempt status - which depicts gay Americans and our equality under the law as some pestilence from the Old Testament. Much of what is set out in Dobson's "Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America" is utterly untrue and - excuse my "French" - bullshit. But then, lies and bullshit aimed at harming the LGBT community are Dobson's stock in trade. The sad thing is that far too many Kool-Aid drinkers of the far right will read this crap and believe it true. The man is truly a menace to civil society and needs to be exposed for the lying fraud that he has long been. Here are a few high lights from Dobson's hate based screed:

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Finally the far-Left had the highest prize: complete control of the Supreme Court. And they set about quickly to expedite cases by which they would enact the entire agenda of the far Left in American politics – everything they had hoped for and more took just a few key decisions.

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Same-sex “marriage” The most far-reaching transformation of American society came from the Supreme Court’s stunning affirmation, in early 2010, that homosexual “marriage” was a “constitutional” right that had to be respected by all 50 states because laws barring same-sex “marriage” violated the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Suddenly, homosexual “marriage” was the law of the land in all 50 states. . .

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Boy Scouts: “The land of the free”? The Boy Scouts no longer exist as an organization. They chose to disband rather than be forced to obey the Supreme Court decision that they would have to hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys.

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Elementary schools: “The land of the free”? Elementary schools now include compulsory training in varieties of gender identity in Grade 1, including the goodness of homosexuality as one possible personal choice. Many parents tried to “opt out” their children from such sessions, but the courts have ruled they cannot do this. . .

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Adoption agencies: “The land of the free”? There are no more Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant adoption agencies in the United States. Following earlier rulings in New York 7and Massachusetts,8 the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that these agencies had to agree to place children with homosexual couples or lose their licenses.

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Public broadcasting: “The land of the free”? The Bible can no longer be freely preached over radio or television stations when the subject matter includes such “offensive” doctrines as criticizing homosexual behavior.

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Homosexual weddings: “The land of the free”? Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation” by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples.

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Homosexuals in the military: One change regarding the status of homosexuals did not wait for any Supreme Court decision. In the first week after his inauguration, President Obama invited homosexual rights leaders from around the United States to join him at the White House as he signed an executive order directing all branches of the military to abandon their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and to start actively recruiting homosexuals.

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Christian books: After the Supreme Court legalized same “sex marriage,” homosexual-activist groups targeted three large Christian book publishers that had publications arguing that homosexual conduct was wrong based on the teachings of the Bible. . . . As a result, those evangelical publishers could no longer distribute any of their books through any of these bookstore chains. Any Christian publisher that dares to print works critical of homosexual behavior faces the same fate. As a result, several Christian publishers have gone out of business.
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Obviously, Dobson has been re-reading his Joseph Goebbels handbook on propaganda tactics used against Jews in Nazi Germany to craft his very similar attack method on gays. One can only wonder how many LGBT citizens will be subjected to hate, violence and/or death at the hands of those listening to Dobson's hate speech. Dobson is many things, but being a true Christian is not one of them.

"Christian" Chaplin: Gays Should Have Sodomy Warning Tattoos

I never cease to be amazed at the hatefulness that alleged Christians demonstrate towards gays. They truly act as if we were some alien species that is clearly less than human. Moreover, they demonstrate on a daily basis that the Commandment to love thy neighbor is an unknown concept for them if their neighbor happens to look or love differently than themselves. The latest demonstration of hate comes from the Reverend Peter Mullen, chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, who according to the Evening Standard wrote the following on his blog:

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"It is time that religious believers began to recommend ... discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets. "Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS."

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I'm sure a great many of the Christianists supporting the McCain/Palin ticket harbor similar views, all the while professing to be "Godly Christians." Fortunately, the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, did not find Mullen's comments appropriate. Here are more highlights from the Evening Standard:

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[T]the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, . . . . today also rebuked Mr Mullen for his remarks. In a statement issued to the Evening Standard, a spokesman said: "While clergy are entitled to their own personal views, we recognise that the content of this text is highly offensive and is in no way reflective of the views of the Diocese of London." A source at the Diocese said the chaplain may now face a disciplinary inquiry over his comments. The source said: "These comments are now being looked at internally within the Diocese and he faces disciplinary procedures."

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When confronted over his comments yesterday at St Michael's Cornhill the rector [Mullen] claimed they were in jest.

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I don't know about you, but I don't find the comments the least bit funny and they dredge up the vision of the Nazi practice of tattooing those to be exterminated.

Nazi Persecution of Gays Is Explored In Exhibit

Many of the Christianists like to allege that the Nazi persecution of gays is without a basis and some of the more lunatic elements even try to blame the Holocaust on gays. But then, accurate honest, accounts of history are NOT a Christianist strong suit. They rewrite history at will to further their theocratic/fascist agenda. Individuals like Oklahoma Rep. Sall Kern, James Dobsons and others who preach an anti-gay message are currently speaking about gays in dehumanizing terms just as their fascist predecessors did about Jews in the lead up to the Holocaust. Christians they are not. Thus, I found this story from the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/16/nazi_persecution_of_gays_is_explored_in_exhibit_at_uri/) interesting because it looks at a museum exhibit that documents the actual, real truth. Here are some highlights:

In Nazi Germany, some gay men were castrated and prosecuted by the Gestapo under Draconian laws prohibiting homosexuality. Others were subjected to crude medical experiments purported to correct their sexual orientation. Gay men in concentration camps were singled out with distinctive pink triangle badges and assigned backbreaking labor that often killed them. A traveling exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum uses photographs, documents, and artwork to chronicle the Nazis' arrests and persecution of tens of thousands of gay men from 1933 to 1945.

The exhibit, on display through the end of the month at the University of Rhode Island, gives voice to what its curator describes as "one of the lesser-known stories of the Nazi era." "You could substitute the word homosexual and put in any minority group and see a story of how easy it is to persecute somebody who is outside of the norms of the society," said curator Edward J. Phillips, also acting director of the museum's division of exhibitions.

The Nazis regarded gay men as a socially deviant subclass whose sexual preference threatened the elite and masculine Aryan race they sought to establish. A diagram included in the exhibit likens homosexuality to a contagious infection that could be spread among men by seduction. Sexual relationships between women, already regarded as second-class citizens, were not criminalized, and lesbians were generally seen as less of a cultural threat, Phillips said.

The exhibit begins just before the Nazis rose to power, when an estimated 1.2 million gay men lived in Germany and a gay culture flourished in nightclubs and cafes. But after Adolf Hitler took power, the Nazis began closing gay clubs, and in 1934 the Gestapo asked local police departments to compile lists of men believed to be gay.

In 1943, SS chief Heinrich Himmler approved a medical experiment designed to "correct" gay men of their sexual preferences. Two men died from complications of the surgery, the exhibit says. A highlight of the exhibit is a series of published lithographs by Richard Grune, a gay artist who was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. His works, with titles like "Death Slide to the Crematorium in Concentration Camp Flossenburg" and "Undernourished Prisoners in the Bath," offer unflinching depictions of prisoners as exhausted, skeletal, and tortured.

A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukrainian Jews’ Fate

This story (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/world/europe/06priest.html?_r=1&ex=1349409600&en=e4fbbbc4d703f3de&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&oref=slogin) is yet another reminder of what happens when fear and/or hatred of those who are different is allowed to run unchecked. One of my best and most supportive friends is Jewish and he and his extended family treat me as almost like family, so these stories always particularly sicken me. All of us need to be mindful of how horrors can occur when we overlook the humanity of others and preach hatred (Daddy Dobson, I hope you take heed). Here are some highlights:

PARIS, Oct. 5 — His subjects were mostly children and teenagers at the time, terrified witnesses to mass slaughter. Some were forced to work at the bottom rung of the Nazi killing machine — as diggers of mass graves, cooks who fed Nazi soldiers and seamstresses who mended clothes stripped from the Jews before execution.

They live today in rural poverty, many without running water or heat, nearing the end of their lives. So Patrick Desbois has been quietly seeking them out, roaming the back roads and forgotten fields of Ukraine, hearing their stories and searching for the unmarked common graves. He knows that they are an unparalleled source to document the murder of the 1.5 million Jews of Ukraine, shot dead and buried throughout the country.

The Nazis killed nearly 1.5 million Jews in Ukraine after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. But with few exceptions, most notably the 1941 slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, much of that history has gone untold.

Over four years, Father Desbois has videotaped more than 700 interviews with witnesses and bystanders and has identified more than 600 common graves of Jews, most of them previously unknown. He also has gathered material evidence of the execution of Jews from 1941 to 1944, the “Holocaust of bullets” as it is called.

Some of the results of Father Desbois’s research — including video interviews, wartime documents, photographs of newly uncovered mass graves, rusty bullets and shell casings and personal possessions of the victims — are on display for the first time at an exhibit at the Memorial of the Shoah in the Marais district of Paris. The exhibit shows, for example, images of the 15 mass graves of several thousand Jews in a commune called Busk that Father Desbois and his team discovered and began excavating after interviewing several witnesses. Among hundreds of other items on display is a black-and-white photo from 1942 that shows a German police officer shooting naked Jewish women lying in a ravine in the Rivne region.

There are stories of how the Nazis drummed on empty buckets to avoid having to listen to the screams of their victims, how Jewish women were made sex slaves of the Nazis and then executed. One witness said that as a 6-year-old he hid and watched as his best friend was shot to death. Other witnesses described how the Nazis were allowed only one bullet to the back per victim and that the Jews sometimes were buried alive. “One witness told of how the pit moved for three days, how it breathed,” Father Desbois recalled.

How The Nazis [Bush] Defended "Enhanced Interrogation"

Andrew Sullivan again has a post that shows how morally bankrupt Chimperator Bush has made the USA and that interrogations standards are as low or lower than those used by Nazi Party(http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/06/how_the_nazis_d.html#more):

Hint: the ticking time-bomb exception, and the need for better intelligence about an insurgency - the same defense as the GOP establishment has used for exactly the same techniques - hypothermia, stress positions, sensory deprivation, etc. - in the US and Iraq. The terms and specific methods used are the same for the Gestapo's "Verschaerfte Vernehmung," "Third Degree," and Bush's "enhanced interrogation." Of course, we also learn from the documents that the GESTAPO in general believed that other methods of interrogation, such as playing off political factions against each other, were much more effective than third degree methods.

I continue to believe that history will view George W. Bush as the worse President in the nation's history. It will take the USA years to recovery any moral standing in the international community.

Nazi Anti-Jew Speech vs. Christian Right Hate Speech

The New Republic piece at http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=104993 correctly identifies the real reason wingnut Theocrats want the Hate Crimes Act vetoed. The referenced National Review piece clearly shows that the goal is to have the civil laws controlled by one group’s religious beliefs:

“ . . . I am hesitant to support hate crimes legislation, for the usual libertarian, "thought crimes" reasons, but the arguments being presented against it by the religious right are indeed specious. But there's something fishy in the National Review editorial on the matter--which Brad also links to--and this phrase stuck out: "We want to deter and punish crimes against blacks, women, homosexuals, and everyone else. But we do not want to open the door to legal punishment for harboring incorrect thoughts about controversial issues especially when those incorrect thoughts are part of the historic teaching of our major religions." Presumably, National Review does not mean to imply that there are "historic teaching[s] of our major religions" against blacks and women. What the editors mean is gays.

And what are those "incorrect thoughts" that the bill is criminalizing? Not traditionally religious thoughts about homosexuality; these are protected. (After all, there are plenty of people in this country who find homosexuality immoral and don't lynch homosexuals.) The bill only punishes people whose thoughts about homosexuality veer from mere disapproval to the belief that violence is a suitable recourse. National Review is conflating a passive disapproval of homosexuality with the violent reaction to it. Of course, the Old Testament, the Koran and other religious works--as fundamentalists anywhere ought to admit--do call for outright violence against homosexuals.”

The James Dobsons and Tony Perkins of the world do want outright violence against homosexuals (their favorite bogus expert, Paul Cameron, has even suggested exterminating gays as far back as 1983), but know saying so outright would reveal the true hate-based nature of their agenda. A good review of their agenda can be found at http://www.hatecrime.org/subpages/hitler/hitler.html. These vicious individuals are two of the power brokers of today’s GOP. This is down right frightening.