Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

The GOP's Continued Budget Delusions

Watching the MSNBC lineup last night, a common thread came through: Congressional Republicans are throwing a conniption fit over the fact that Barack Obama is pushing the budget deficit plan that he campaigned upon over the better part of the last year.  Actually doing what one promised to Americans during seems an inconceivable concept to blowhards like John Boehner and the Palmetto Queen, Lindsey Graham, who prefer to cater to the wealthiest 2% of Americans and big business interests while throwing 98% of Americans under the bus.  Their reaction would be comical but for the fact that it indicates that today's GOP would rather harm the country than fail to deliver on promises to the greediest and most selfish elements of the GOP puppeteers.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the ongoing delusions in the GOP leadership.  Here are excerpts:

How dare he? President Obama, I mean: How dare he do what he promised during the campaign? How dare he insist on a “balanced approach” to fiscal policy that includes a teensy-weensy tax increase for the rich? Oh, the humanity.

Republicans are having conniptions. Witness the way House Speaker John Boehner reacted when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner presented the administration’s proposals on taxes and spending:

“I was flabbergasted,” Boehner told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “I looked at him and said, ‘You can’t be serious.’ I’ve just never seen anything like it. You know, we’ve got seven weeks between Election Day and the end of the year. And three of those weeks have been wasted with this nonsense.”

The “nonsense” in question is a set of perfectly reasonable measures that Obama wants Congress to approve. Nothing in his package should be a surprise — except, perhaps, that the president has opened this negotiation by demanding what he really wants, rather than what he believes would be convenient for Boehner to deliver.

“The president’s idea of a negotiation is, roll over and do what I ask,” Boehner groused.  Hmmm. Where do you imagine the president might have learned this particular bargaining technique? Might his instructors have been Boehner’s own House Republicans, who went so far as to hold the debt ceiling for ransom — and with it, the nation’s full faith and credit — in order to get their way?

Obama’s proposals include effectively taking away congressional authority over the debt ceiling, which would preclude a repeat of last year’s hostage crisis. Boehner called it “silliness” to think that Congress would willingly surrender a power it can use to “leverage the political process.” So it’s fine when Congress uses muscle to get its way but not when the president does the same?

This fight isn’t about whether the rich will pay more in taxes; it is clear that they will. It’s about whether this new revenue is collected in a way that allows House Republicans to say they have kept their pledge never to raise marginal tax rates for anyone, for any purpose.

Refusing to budge has served House Republicans well in previous budget negotiations. But the no-taxes-ever bulwark has not served the country well, and if Obama sees a way to blast through it, he would be remiss not to try.

Geithner seems confident. “You’ve heard (Republicans) for the first time, I think, in two decades, acknowledge that they are willing to have revenues go up as part of a balanced plan,” he said Sunday. “That’s a good first step, but they have to tell us what they are willing to do on rates and revenues. That’s going to be very hard for Republicans. We understand that, but there’s no way through this without that.”
 

Most House Republicans are in safe districts, but not all of them — and the GOP majority will be smaller when the new Congress convenes. Polls indicate that most Americans believe the tax increase Obama seeks for the wealthy is no big deal. It’s hard to imagine how Republicans can possibly get a better offer on taxes and spending in January than they can get now.  Hence Boehner’s urgency. Time is not on his side.

We can expect more shrieks and fits of the vapors from the GOP before year end.  One can only hope that Obama hangs tough and forces Republicans to for once do something that is in the best interests of the country rather than their political cronies and vulture capitalists like those associated with Mitt Romney.

Gay Friendly Attorney Elected President of the Virginia State Bar

While miracles will not happen over night, for the first time to my knowledge the Virginia State Bar - hardly a bastion of modernity - will soon be headed by a gay friendly attorney.   Virginia Beach attorney Kevin Martingayle was voted the next president-elect of the Virginia State Bar.  The election was the first contested election in 11 years and pitted Martingayle against northern Virginia attorney Raymond Benzinger who was feared to have an advantage given Northern Virginia's larger population base.  Yours truly wrote e-mails and contacted attorneys across the state and encouraged them to support Kevin.  Kevin is not only gay friendly but has a somewhat high profile sister-in-law: Doria Biddle of the Frank DeCaro show who DeCaro describes as the "Kevin Bacon of lesbian Los Angeles."  I am most pleased about Kevin's win.

But back to Kevin Martingayle.  The Virginian Pilot has an article that looks at his election.  Here are highlights:

Virginia Beach attorney Kevin Martingayle has been voted the next president-elect of the Virginia State Bar in the first contested election in 11 years.

Martingayle, who will become the first Bar president from Virginia Beach, defeated Northern Virginia attorney Raymond Benzinger in voting among Bar members. The Bar governs 29,000 licensed attorneys.

A Richmond native, Martingayle received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1991. He is a founding partner in the Beach law firm Bischoff Martingayle. Martingayle will serve as president-elect for one year beginning at the Bar's annual meeting in June, and he will then become Bar president the following year

One thing that I hope to work with Kevin on achieving is an expansion of the Virginia State Bar's diversity program.  Currently, the Bar's idea of diversity is including more women, blacks and non-whites.  LGBT attorneys and the lack of legal  protections for LGBT Virginians are invisible at present.

The Birth of a Grandchild

My youngest daughter (pictured above) delivered her baby daughter this morning at 12:11 AM.  Mother and daughter are doing well.  Mia Isabella weighed in at 8 lbs 4 oz and is 21 inches long.  Fortunately, the hospital is about 5 minutes from my office and a quick visit will be the first order of my day.

As with more and more of the younger generations, little Mia will grow up knowing that gays are a normal part of the fabric of life and families.  When it comes to being "inherently disordered" she will come to know its supposedly godly Christians best known for their fear and hatred of others, not gays, who are in opposition to natural law.  Yes, Mitt Romney, we gays do have families.

And yes, it goes with saying that this child will be the boyfriend's spoiled little princess.  I might just spoil her myself as well.  More photos will follow soon!

UPDATED:  Here's a photo that was taken this morning at the hospital as I was holding my new grandchild.  She is a cutie and it was really moving to hold her for the first time.

More Monday Male Beauty

Ken Cuccinelli is Wrong for Virginia

This blog has noted several times the extreme danger that would be governor of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli poses to the Commonwealth and its citizenry.  Or at least the citizenry that doesn't consist of angry white men and their browbeaten wives.  Never in my memory has a major party stood poised to nominate a candidate as extreme and in my view plainly insane as Kookinelli.  Bob McDonnell, who I have known personally since 1994, may be ultra conservative, but McDonnell is a flaming liberal compared to Kookinelli.  As the Title to this post indicates, Kookinelli is as extreme as defeated GOP candidate Todd Akin on abortion.  But Kookinelli's batshitery and dangerous policy agenda items extend far further and includes a rabidly anti-gay component, an extreme anti-black component, and anti-Hispanic component.  A piece in Think Progress lays out a good overview of Kookinelli's extremism .  Here are highlights (please read the entire piece):

Virginia’s Republican Party appears poised to nominate state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to be its candidate for governor in 2013 — embracing a man whose extreme political views bear striking resemblance to those of unsuccessful 2012 Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO).


Over seven-and-a-half years as a Virginia state senator and three years as the commonwealth’s attorney general, Republican Ken Cuccinelli II has been, in the words of the Washington Post’s editorial board, “the most overtly partisan attorney general in Virginia’s history.” Though he claims he is “best known for his efforts to preserve liberty and defend the US Constitution,” it is his opposition to liberty for women and LGBT Americans and his frequent court losses based on his flawed constitutional theories that have defined his political career to date.

While perhaps not as careless as Akin with his rhetoric, Cuccinelli has embraced many of the same extreme positions:

1. He wants an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. His 2002 campaign website laid out Cuccinelli’s abortion views clearly: “Ken believes that human life begins at conception, and that human beings should be respected and protected from conception to natural death,” it said. “Ken would seek to require sonograms to be part of a 24-hour waiting period with an informed consent requirement. Ken opposes abortions that are not for the purpose of saving the mother’s life.” Over his political career, he has pushed to defund Planned Parenthood and embryonic stem cell research. He pushed for a ban on third trimester abortions — making no exception for serious health risks on the woman — and for “safety” regulations for abortion providers designed to force clinics to close.  .  .  .  .  .  Cuccinelli frequently attacks Planned Parenthood and has suggested that the fact that abortion clinics in Virginia are in urban areas with large African American populations is an example of white racism. His “ultimate goal,” he has said, is to “make abortion disappear in America.”

2. He does not believe LGBT people deserve legal protections. Cuccinelli has made it clear that he believes same-sex relationships are immoral. In 2009, he told a Virginia newspaper, “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that.” After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case that such bans were unconstitutional, he still voted against repealing a state law making consensual sodomy a felony. He has actively pushed for state and federal constitutional amendments to prevent any legal recogntition of what he terms “what they’d like to refer to as ‘homosexual families,’” authoring a resolution calling for a federal amendment to invalidate any same-sex marriage, civil union, domestic partnership, or “other relationship analogous to marriage.”  .   .   .   .   He even opposed a state bill that allowed private companies to voluntarily provide health insurance benefits to employees’ domestic partners, warning it might “encourage this type of behavior.” His advisory opinion that Virginia’s public colleges and universities should rescind their non-discrimination policies was called “reprehensible” by a former Republican state legislator.

3. He is a climate-change denier. As part of his efforts to cast doubt on climate-change science, he used his position to launch an inquisition against a former University of Virginia climate scientist. Citing possible “fraud against taxpayers,” Cuccinelli demanded the university provide him with a wide range of records relating Dr. Michael E. Mann’s grant applications. A circuit judge and then the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the Attorney General was incorrect in believing he had the legal authority to undertake such a fishing expedition. He blasted the ruling, newspapers blasted him for wasting Virginia tax dollars. He also failed in his federal lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas — a unanimous appeals court upheld the agency’s regulations as based on an “unambiguously correct” reading of the law. Since his legal efforts for climate-change denial failed, he often relies on mockery, asking audiences to exhale carbon dioxide in unison, during his speeches, to annoy the EPA.

4. He suggested President Obama stole the 2012 election. In a radio interview, Cuccinelli told the host he completely agreed with her assertion that investigations are needed to determine why President Obama lost “every one” of the states with photo identification requirements for voting, yet won re-election. Though studies have shown Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud, he told the host she was “preaching to the choir” with her unfounded theory.

5. He wants Arizona-style anti-immigrant policies and self-deportation. On his 2007 campaign website, he explained that since the federal government “has been negligent in its responsibility to secure our borders,” he was “committed to passing legislation that removes the economic incentives that fuel illegal immigration.” To do this, he opposed in-state tuition for undocumented students, embraced limits on the number of people who can live in a house, and supported civil litigation so competitors could sue when a rival “employer knowingly hires illegal aliens.” He opposed bipartisan immigration reform efforts as “amnesty” for the “illegal aliens in the job market” who are “depressing wages and reducing American’s standard of living.” In 2010, he wrote in an opinion that “Virginia law enforcement officers, including conservation officers may, like Arizona police officers, inquire into the immigration status of persons stopped or arrested.” And Cuccinelli joined an amicus brief defending key provisions of Arizona’s immigration reform law which were later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

And despite the ruling of the United States Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Health Care Act - a/k/a "Obamacare" - Kookinelli rants on his campaign website that the  law is "unconstitutional."   The man is insane and anyone who falls for his disingenuous belated effort to pretend to be a moderate needs their head examined.  

The Fiscal Cliff: The GOP Plan to Nowhere

As the date that the country may go over the waterfall and fiscal cliff gets closer, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Congressional Republicans have no real plan to deal with the nation's budget deficit.  Other than saying "Нет!" (pronounced "nyeht") like backward looking Communist Politburo members of old to anything proposed by the White House, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen, John Boehner and company have no plan.  As was the case with Mitt Romney's ill-fated campaign proposal, the math for the GOP tax cut extensions for  the wealthy simply doesn't work absent drastic cuts to programs for the poor and middle class.  And the election results on November 6th underscored just how thoroughly the majority of Americans rejected the Romney/Ryan agenda.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the GOP's mindless know nothing agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Sunday, Dec. 2, was Day 26 of the fiscal cliff hostage situation. And the Democrats, who gained an immense advantage in the negotiations over future tax rates by virtue of their victories in the election, seem, finally, to be developing some swagger. Their tone toward the Republicans has become somewhat patronizing. First, there was President Obama’s mid-week invitation of Mitt Romney to lunch at the White House, which was simultaneously magnanimous and a pretty naked power move. Romney couldn’t refuse to come without looking like an extremely sore loser. The single photo released, which quickly went viral, showed Obama giving Romney the kind of good-try handshake that coaches deliver to their opponents after a thorough spanking.

Now, the Republicans are compromising and demoralizing their base. The Obama White House is largely standing back and watching with glee as congressmen line up to abandon Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge. (My personal favorite is Rep. Chris Gibson of New York, who said his pledge doesn’t count anymore because, thanks to redrawing of the map, he now represents a different district.) Republicans have generally conceded that a deal will have to include more revenue, but insist now that new revenue arises solely from closing loopholes and capping deductions.

The Democrats are essentially pocketing the Republicans’ capitulation on revenue and asking for much more—they’ve adopted the old GOP strategy of simply repeating their desires as a method of bargaining.

[T]he Democrats are confident that the Republicans’ cave on revenue is just the beginning. “I don’t think Republicans are willing to shut down the government over 2 percent of the country,” said top economic aide Jason Furman at an on-the-record briefing last week.

The psychological warfare can also be seen in the patronizing tone Democratic officials are now taking toward the Republicans. The Republican leaders, who used to throw terror into Democrats, are now objects of pity. There was Sen. Claire McCaskill, fresh after dispatching Tea Party loon Todd Akin, on Meet the Press. “I feel almost sorry for John Boehner,” McCaskill said. “There is incredible pressure on him from a base of his party that is unreasonable about this. And he’s gotta decide, is his speakership more important, or is the country more important.” 

The reality should be seeping in to viewers of the Sunday shows that the Republicans don’t have a game plan. They don’t have a single, specific proposal to avoid the fiscal cliff. And even if they had one, they don’t have a roadmap to get there. They keep expecting Obama to come back with something more to their liking, which they’d also reject. Many Republicans literally don’t understand what is happening. Sen. Charles Grassley tweeted over the weekend that he was frustrated that President Obama hadn’t embraced the recommendation of the Bowles-Simpson Commission. Apparently, he is one of the many people in Washington who doesn’t understand that Bowles-Simpson recommended letting the Bush tax rates on the wealthy expire, while also proposing to cap or eliminate deductions primarily enjoyed by the wealthy.

Above all, the Republicans have yet to grasp that the field is tilted against them. Republicans have every reason to expect, based on their scouting of past Obama performances, that he will start moving toward them and then, essentially, bargain with himself. But now he doesn’t have to. Right now, the policy choice isn’t between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and a preferred Republican proposal. No, the choice is between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and the fiscal cliff, which Republicans would like even less and the Democrats could live with for a while.

The Republicans are losing, and time is running out. But instead of putting the quarterback on the field and rolling out an aggressive two-minute drill, they seem to be preparing to punt.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Looking At the Real History of December 25th and Christmas

It is December and while the holiday season can offer time with family, friends and hopes for a better tomorrow, as is the norm, we also see the ugly efforts of the Christian Right to demonize retailers and others who fail to force all of their customers to engage in the Christmas story.  These "godly Christians" basically flip the middle finger to non-Christian Americans - and label as a foe those who "censor" Christmas.  Three years ago I did a post that looked at the phenomenon and as the onslaught of the far right once again ensues, it is forth while remembering the real history of how today's Christmas story - myth if you will - came to be.  It is very different from what one hears coming from America's pulpits.  As Bob Felton at Civil Commotion noted in 2009, not only are such "campaigns" to stop the "war on Christmas" insulting to non-Christian Americans, but they also ignore the historical fact that the present day date of Christmas was hijacked from pagan festivals, in particular celebrations to the middle eastern derived god, Mithras. Here are a few of Bob's comments:

* ‘Recognition’ includes exclusivity from retailers when greeting shoppers; those who say ’season’s greetings’ to the nation’s Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Bahai, agnostics, atheists, Wiccans … they are foes.

* The comical irony, of course, is the grotesque and garish dishonesty of it. Christianity stole the solstice from the Romans, who observed Saturnalia, who stole it from the Greeks, who stole it from the Egyptians, who stole it (probably) from Asia. The winter solstice has been the occasion for observances for at least 5000-years and, always, literally and metaphorically, the shortest day of the year has signified a sort of bottom and the promise of coming better times.

Not only was the date of December 25th commandeered from the pagan celebrations by Pope Julius I in the year 350, but the Mithras cult had other interesting parallels to the relatively new Christian faith (as did aspects of the cult of the Egyptian goddess, Isis). Here are some highlights from History 101:

* However there is another theory - regarding the worship of Mithras, an Indo-Aryan deity (the Mitra of Vedic religion, the Mithra of the Persian Avesta) associated with the heavens and light. His cult entered the Roman Empire in the first century BC and during the formative decades of the Christian movement was a formidable rival to the latter, with temples from Syria to Britain. Given his solar associations, it made sense to believe that he had been born on the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice. That falls this year on December 21 but the Romans celebrated the birth feast of Mithras on December 25, ordered to do so by Emperor Aurelian in 274 AD. Christian texts from 325 note that the birthday of Jesus had come to be observed on that same day, and the Roman Catholic Church has in modern times acknowledged that the December 25 Christmas quite likely derived from Mithraic practice.

* Mithras, the story went, had been born of a virgin. Virgin-birth stories were a denarius a dozen in the ancient world, so this similarity to the gospel story isn't surprising. But Mithras was also born in very humble circumstances in a cave, and upon his miraculous birth found himself in immediate proximity to the bovine. In his case, not mellow manger beasts but a wild bull. In the Persian version of the myth, this bull had been the first creation of Ahura Mazda, another, greater god of light. (Ahura Mazda, in the history of Persian religion, gradually becomes conceptualized as something like the Judeo-Christian God. But his worship in the Zoroastrian tradition probably predates the Jewish conception of Yahweh as universal deity. Quite likely the Zoroastrian conception of God influenced the Jewish one.)

* Mithras serving Ahura Mazda subdued the bull, confining it in the cave, and later slaughteed it. The blood of the slaughtered bull then generated vegetation and all life. This myth surely has something to do with cattle-worship among ancient Aryan peoples, which of course survives to this day in India. In Rome the Mithras cult involved such rituals as drenching the Mithras devotee in bull-blood, and having believers in secret ceremonies consume in the form of bread and wine the flesh and blood of the fabled slaughtered bull. A communion ceremony, if you will. Mithras died and was entombed, but rose from the dead. In some accounts, he does so on the third day.

Yet another source has this about Mithras:

 

Mithra was a Persian savior. Worship of Mithra became common throughout the Roman Empire, particularly among the Roman civil service and military. Mithraism was a competitor of Christianity until the 4th century. Their god was believed to have been born on DEC-25, circa 500 BCE. His birth was witnessed by shepherds and by gift-carrying Magi. This was celebrated as the “Dies Natalis Solic Invite,” The “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.” Some followers believed that he was born of a virgin. During his life, he performed many miracles, cured many illnesses, and cast out devils. He celebrated a Last Supper with his 12 disciples. He ascended to heaven at the time of the spring equinox, about March 21. 

 

I believe that individuals are free to believe whatever they want about the Christmas holidays.  That does not mean that everyone else must be forced into submission.  The historic truth is that few Christians (or others) nowadays know of Mithras, but today much of the world unwittingly celebrates his birth.  The irony of the history challenged, egocentric morons of the Christian Right and professional Christian set is that they foolishly rely on an allegedly inerrant Bible that can be proven to be anything but inerrant. Moreover, they are in effect promoting a pagan holiday to which the early Roman Catholic Church added a veneer to further its own aggrandizement. It would be humorous but for the damage these Christofascists do to others in the process of their self-centered love affair with themselves.

Update on Prop 8 and DOMA Cases

As noted last week, the U. S. Supreme Court did not tip its hand as to which, if any of the gay marriage cases it might consider during the current term of the Court.   The American Foundation for Equal Rights ("AFER") has issued a status report.  Here are highlights:

Tomorrow, the United States Supreme Court could announce whether it has granted or denied review in Hollingsworth v. Perry (formerly Perry v. Brown), the federal constitutional challenge to California's Proposition 8. The Perry case, along with several cases challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), were distributed for discussion at the Justices' private Conference of Friday, November 30, 2012.

Should the Court grant review, the Justices will go on to consider whether Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. If the Court denies review, the February 2012 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that struck down Proposition 8 is made permanent, ending four years of marriage inequality in California.

On Friday, November 30, the United States Supreme Court issued an Order List revealing two cases considered at its November 30 Conference that have been granted review. The Perry case and the DOMA cases were not on that list. The Supreme Court is expected to release an Order List with its decisions on cases it has granted or denied review from its November 30 Conference by Monday, December 3 at 9:30 a.m. EST/6:30 a.m. PST. In the event that the Court neither grants nor denies review in Perry by December 3, the Justices will discuss the case again at a future Conference.

It goes without saying that there will be updates depending on what the Court decides to do with these cases.