The Last Liberal in San Diego

Afghan War to End in 2014

2010-11-15T00:33:00.000-08:00

I saw an article in today's paper about the Obama administration saying they plan to bring the Afghan war to an end in 2014. That's interesting, since they likely will only be in power through 2012. What the heck are we doing over there, anyway?

The war is dragging on with little if any real progress. We trade territory with the Taliban, the Afghan Army and police seem unlikely to ever be able to take over, and we are ignoring the lessons of history. The Russians lost in their Afghan war. Are we doing anything other than repeating their mistakes?

As a recent article in The Atlantic (see "The Last Patrol" Nov. 2010) shows, even soldiers over there whose comrades are dying question the value of the military effort there. We read in the paper that Karzai gets bags of money from Iran and he admits it's true. Our noble American men and women are over there getting killed and wounded, and the locals neither appreciate their presence nor understand what we are trying to accomplish there.

We all remember Vietnam. We have seen Iraqmire, and we are seeing Afghanmire. The time to think seriously about ending these pointless foreign wars isn't three years from now, it is in 2011. I support the troops, so this isn't an issue of patriotism. It's an issue of recognizing that pointlessly continuing a misguided foreign policy has already been too costly, and needs to stop NOW.

Michael Jackson and the American News Media Both DOA

2009-07-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson has died an early, perhaps untimely death. We will know in time more about the official “cause of death”. To no one’s surprise Jacko’s demise has been spun up into a media circus. But even (cynic that I am about the American media) I am amazed at the sheer amount of coverage, even on news outlets one would think could maintain higher standards. All seem eager to jump onto the absurd bandwagon of unending repetition of what little is “known”, a parade of experts who really know nothing more than the rest of us, speculation much of which borders on the ridiculous, and the ongoing spouting of nonsensical King of Pop minutia.

The degradation of the American news reporting behemoth in the last few years is truly disturbing. Those of us old enough to remember when television, radio and newspapers actually reported the news (think of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Kronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, etc.), told us daily of the unfolding events when we were at war, and gave us more than sound bites about government. We, sadly, have also seen the entire American media machine become no more respectable than a 1961 issue of The Enquirer. And The Enquirer was the newspaper that featured headlines like “Mom Boiled Babies Then Ate Them”. That’s how respectable the The Enquirer was--pure fiction, nonsense, sensationalism times infinity, and in very many cases out-and-out lies. Some even quite hurtful to those being reported about. The editors and publishers hid, like Jerry Springer and Rush Limbaugh, behind the banner of “entertainment” so—then as now—they could continue their vulgar outpouring of a kind of anti-truth.

As newspapers slowly fade away--I read two regularly and believe me, they are slowly dying—-both in sales and in quality—-the rest of the media world gives us pap instead of news. Increasingly the nature of information we are given is no better on news channels than on QVC and infomercials. Snippets, half-truths, talking heads telling us not the news so much as their version of what we should think and believe about the news, all of this as substitute for content we can make our own decisions about.

There are still some better places to get news, but they are flickers rather than bright lights. Public radio (NPR and affiliates) is pretty good, although degraded in recent years by immense pressure and defunding by conservatives who targeted them for telling the truth. Conservatives prefer managed reporting ala Fox News—the Rupert Murdoch version of selective and slanted reporting spun so that lies sound like truth, and opinion masquerades as news. There is, and of course you know if you are reading this, the internet. So those of us who care to search for the truth, or some hint of it, anyway, hunt around the ‘net for some real news. To be sure, it is getting harder and harder to find. And if democracy depends on an informed populace, where does that leave America?

Votes, Lies and Ahmadinejad

2009-06-13T10:17:00.001-07:00

As I write this, rioters are storming the streets of Tehran, doing battle with the armed storm troopers of their religious dictatorship. Brave people, those protesters. I admire them. Not so long ago, here on American soil, we made folks like that into heros, calling them Minute Men and such. Brave people, mostly young, idealistic, and willing to risk life and limb to fight for freedom.

But as the battle unfolds, I can’t help but feel that it is hopeless, that cruelty and power, and vote manipulation and religious fanaticism, will win out, for now. I guess I’ve been in a hopeful mood, with Obama getting elected and working on health care, saying he’ll wind things up in Iraq, really doing something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc. Now I am asking myself why I ever thought there would be anything like a fair election in Iran. The religious zealots are in ultimate control, they know it, and they aren’t going to give it up.

Ahmadinejad is their point man, attack dog, lightning rod. The Iranian people can, most of the time, largely be distracted from their broad dissatisfactions—the evidence of which is playing out on street corners in Tehran at this moment—by constantly being refocused on the bugaboo Satans their leaders have created, most notably Israel and the United States. By denying the Holocaust and calling for the destruction of Israel Ahmadinejad wins points among the militant and fanatical elements across the Middle East, inflaming them to take Iranian money, build bombs, blow themselves up, and generally make whatever trouble they can while, by the way, killing all the Jews they can, among others. So then, like many other dictatorial leaders across the Middle East (Israel is the only thing approaching a genuine democracy, although there are those who would even argue that), the speeches and the fixed, fake elections help to squelch any outcry about poverty, economic stagnation, poor schooling, poor health care, heavy-handed repression, and last but not least, the subjugation of women.

So in the end the Ayatollah needs Ahmadinejad. I’m not easily given to hate, but I do hate the bigmouth troublemaker for what he says, what he is, and what he represents. Because he is the poster boy for all that is wrong in the Middle East among those who oppose Israel. On the world stage now, he epitomizes the arrogance, the hate, the unwillingness to listen to reason, the eagerness to ignore history, the clinging to some distorted version of religion that encourages the senseless murder of innocents and the pointless hatred of nations.

One small step up from Nazism only because of the absence of a powerful, efficient and effective machine of mass death, this whole philosophy represented and promoted by Ahmadinejad and others like him is the reason the Middle East stays stuck, represents the worst of human nature, and poses a threat, ultimately, to us all. Iran is moving quickly toward having useable (I think the experts say “deliverable”) nuclear weapons. When they have those, even the machine of mass death—or at least some of its most deadly tools--will be in place.

CHENEY AS ATTACK DOG

2009-06-09T20:46:00.000-07:00

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has assumed the role of the new Republican attack dog. I’m glad he’s around to remind us of what the Republican Party really stands for. First and foremost, it stands for torture. Let’s face it, some spinners can split hairs, but waterboarding and other stuff they did was torture and we all know it. Further, Cheney’s Republican Party promotes such extreme executive power that a President can put people in captivity indefinitely, often with little more justification than the notion, often based on false, flimsy or unreliable evidence that they might be dangerous. You might recall that this kind of despotic power that was popular among medieval kings who could throw anyone who rubbed them the wrong way into a dungeon—forever. History teaches us that this is why we had the Magna Carta, why representative government emerged in enlightened societies, and why countries like the Good Old U.S.A. treasure our democracies and their rights and freedoms. Further, Cheney’s Republican Party stands for a kind of America that is reviled around the world for an arrogant, idiotic, isolating and ineffective foreign policy. So thanks Dick, you can cite 9/11 as much as you want, cry wolf all you can, smear the “new America” President Obama is creating all you want. Some Americans may have a short memory, it’s true, but most of us remember voting for Barack Obama, and we remember why we did. You see, Dick, that “new America” we’ll have during the Obama era, that’s the old America we loved and cherished before you and that yo-yo from Texas came along.

WE NEED HEALTH CARE, NOT HEALTH INSURANCE

2009-06-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed that there is often confusion between “health care” and “health care insurance” in the current common lexicon. In today’s world the two phrases have become, sadly, almost synonymous. Well let me clarify, “health care” is treatment that saves lives and helps people get better when they are ill or injured. “Health care insurance” is a scam that has been perpetrated against the American people. Now my last statement is a pretty controversial one, but I urge you to keep reading allow me the opportunity to justify it in a few paragraphs.

The foundation of health care insurance, the basic economic model upon which it is based, is flawed. It isn’t flawed in terms of making money, it does that, perhaps too well. However, it IS quite deficient in terms of paying for care to make people better. First, insurance companies only make money by figuring out how to avoid providing people with the care they need, after all, care costs money. Second, insurance companies have an army of agents, customer service people, healthcare gatekeepers, and executives all of whom have to be paid. A whole bureaucracy including fat cats with multimillion-dollar salaries, and even stockholders who expect dividends—all of this paid for with the money we think is going toward paying for our healthcare. But all of those millions, folks, they aren’t going to doctors and hospitals.

The really tragic part of health care insurance is the wreckage it leaves in its wake. We see it now in America, and you probably know people who have been its victims. Patients who, even with insurance, can’t afford to get all of the care they need, or can’t afford the medications that are required for their treatment. There are health care consumers who have insurance but have had to sell or mortgage their homes, or dramatically reduce and contract their lifestyles so that they can pay their portion of their health care costs. One might ask, what’s the point of having health care insurance if even with coverage a serious illness or injury means you will face financial ruin? And the even more obvious question—What’s the point of having health care insurance if you can’t afford the health care you need?

So, you see, it’s just a scam--another example of the basic bait-and-switch bunko stuff that has existed for centuries, but in a modern new package. All of the things we all think we are getting when we pay those premiums, well those aren’t really what we get when we’re sick or injured. In reality we are get far less—much less than our money’s worth.

Now the country is moving to repair the system. On the whole that’s a positive thing. But there is concern about who is at the table. The insurance companies have their agenda, and one can expect them to have that “the business of business is business” mentality, which would be based on their ability to maintain profitability. Why?

During the last several decades the basic economic model of health care has changed. Do you remember when your local hospital was a nonprofit organization? I know a lot about nonprofit organizations and they exist for the benefit of the communities they serve. During those same decades the American people were sold a bill of goods about nonsense like “public-private partnerships” along with a lot of right-wing pap about how business does everything better than government. Well, I’ve worked in government and in the private sector and I’ve seen some darn good organizations and some ridiculous ones on both sides.

Let me say out loud something that you will realize is right as soon as I say it. Working for profit is no guarantee of quality products or services. Poor quality stuff represented to consumers as something better than what it is can be found in every shopping mall. And poor quality service has become commonplace in modern America. So if this is what we experience every time we shop or try to get something fixed, why would be believe that BUSINESS is the solution to all of our societal problems? Our job as citizens is to recognize when they are feeding us lies, and politicians, especially those on the political right have been doing lots of this about how business can save us. What business can do is make money. Then those same businesses that make more money are beholden to the politicians, and can give them even more money not to listen to us or care about what is good for us. Is that something we want to support?

Besides, government does lots of things well. People performing as part of a government workforce maintain our birth records, pick up our trash, deliver our mail, and do little things when they have to like defeating the Nazis and the Japanese because they want to take over the world. There is a lot of American pride about what we can do when we set our minds to it, and you know, we can do some things pretty darn well. We can do those things either publicly—as a government effort—or privately.

It makes little sense to involve the private sector in things where profit isn’t the primary motive. Because if we involve the private sector in things where profit isn’t the primary motive, then profit will become the primary motive, and that is exactly what has happened in health care. The goal of helping people to get well, or recover from an illness or injury has been displaced by the profit motive, by multi-million dollar salaries for fat cat executives, and by making money for stockholders. We don’t need profit to be part of our health care system. We shouldn’t be paying health care CEO’s a hundred million dollars a year, and we don’t need stockholders wanting dividends or demanding that management behave in a ways that impress Wall St. to make stock values increase.

As I said, an important change that has happened in the health care system in America in the last several decades is that it has switched from being not-for-profit (or nonprofit) to being for profit. So now that the time has come to reconstitute health care in America, we have to ask, what do we want? Do we want health care sold and managed as a commodity, on a for-profit basis to make money? Or do we want health care managed as a utility the way Los Angeles County manages water and power, or other user-owned systems operate solely for the benefit of their users?

We have seen many changes in the health care system in America, and most of them haven’t been good. We used to beam with pride about having the most admired system in the entire world. Just a few years of for-profit management has changed that, so when are we going to catch-on to the fact that we need to rethink the foundation, the fundamental model of how we organize and manage health care? The system should exist for the medical well-being of everyone, and the financial well-being of no one. Eliminate the fat cat executives, the stockholders, the army of people paid to deny us care, process our “claims” and then kick us out of the program because our health care needs are too costly. All of those people are paid, and they are eating up the money that we need to be spending on surgery, medicines, and expensive machines that can see inside our bodies. Those people are unnecessary. They provide no health care, and they are draining essential economic resources from a system that desperately needs money to make us well.

Last but not least, we need a system that takes care of everyone, that doesn’t blame or victimize people because they get hurt or sick, or have genes that result in illness, or they get cancer. We need a system that doesn’t bring people to economic ruin because they need health care. We need a government overseen, managed, contracted or operated system that will take care of people who need taking care of, and do it with regard to efficiency, but without regard to profit, and with great compassion and concern. We need a system that works to make people better, and that exists only for the purpose of making people better. We don’t need a system that makes a few greedy people rich by denying care to the rest of us and undoing what once made the American health care system the most respected and admired in the world.

MEASURE ISRAEL BY THE SAME YARDSTICK

2009-01-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

During the last several days Israel has invaded the Gaza area, and bombarded it with artillery and air strikes. Sadly, many people were killed, among them women and children. More evidence of a seemingly unresolvable Middle East conflict.I have lived through several wars and even more military actions. Vietnam, the two Iraq wars, Afghanistan, and many, many others. In that entire time I cannot recall a military intervention that was covered in as much detail as the recent Israeli action against Hamas. In America, we saw and heard vivid details of damaged buildings, bodies in the street, daily reports of the numbers of "civilians" killed, and heart-wrenching tales of children who had lost limbs, mothers whose children died in their arms, and many, many stories of people who had lost family members. Tales of great human suffering. In all a very stirring collection of reportage, often reinforced by comments from humanitarian workers about how intolerable the situation was, what horrors were unfolding, and how Israel was doing too little to help the people of Gaza.

I ask you, for a moment, to set aside the emotional impact of all of this, and consider what is happening in that situation as a problem in human and international relations. Despite the fact that Hamas has won some elections in Gaza, Hamas is a terrorist organization that is dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel. Hamas has historically not kept agreements, and generally "cease-fire" agreements* only mean that Israel will not launch a major operation while Hamas operatives continue to shoot rockets at Israeli territory and citizens. Being terrorists, they are in the business terrorizing the Israeli populace, and do so generally with impunity. Hamas doesn't have an army, doesn't have a unified government with identifiable leaders who can make agreements and (have those who are ruled) keep to them. During the Gaza action, even as (Gaza) Hamas members were talking of some kind of cease-fire, Hamas leaders in Damascus were calling for continued resistance—that is, for those in Gaza to fight on against the Israelis. So trying to make a deal with Hamas is like trying to herd cats. Even if one could reach an agreement with one faction, other more radical factions would ignore the agreement and continue their terrorism. There simply is no one with whom to actually negotiate any kind of agreement as long as Hamas is in power in Gaza.

Then there is the Israeli aspect of the story. Can you imagine what the U.S. would do if a radical group wanting to take over American territory—or destroy America--was firing rockets from Mexico into California and Arizona? And did so for years. Would we listen to world super-powers who advised us to restrain ourselves? Would Americans just remake their lifestyles and spend hours in bomb shelters every time an alarm went off warning of an incoming missile or rocket? In truth, we would do none of these things. We might try diplomacy, what but if there were no one reliable to negotiate with, or if diplomacy failed? We would attack, invade, and do everything necessary to stop the bombardment of our sovereign territory and ensure the safety of our people.

After 9/11 we, the United States of America, attacked and invaded two nations halfway around the world, because (we were told) this was necessary to ensure our safety. I am not justifying what the U.S. has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am simply pointing out what nations generally do when they are attacked.

These wars we started are ongoing. So, do we get daily reports of casualties, of civilians killed, or parents who have lost children, or of children who have lost limbs? No we don’t. Have we ever gotten that kind of coverage, in all of your memories of the wars and military actions America has undertaken in a dozen countries in the last few decades? No, never.

How about the genocide going on in Africa? The internecine fighting in countries all over the world that result in families being disrupted, children being uprooted, innocents killed, and all the horror that such fighting brings—is this being reported to us in any way approaching the daily, detailed and horrific reports from Gaza? No, no, no.

Once again, I am not justifying ANY military action, nor am I minimizing the human tragedies that they cause. I am however, posing a question. And that question is simply—Why is Israel placed under a microscope that is never focused on any other nation in the world? Why is Israel, measured against, judged and evaluated by a standard that isn’t applied to any other sovereign nation on this planet?

I assume if you are reading this then you follow the news. Reconsider the news that has been reported to you during the last several weeks. Israel attacked an area that has no military, where gangs of men, some of them barely more than boys, take up arms against Israel and its army. A land where young women may strap powerful explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up in an effort to kill Israelis. So in that situation, when Israel causes the deaths of people, who are “civilians”? How would one even know? And if Israel is fighting an enemy that stores weapons and fires missiles from mosques, schools, clinics, hospitals, U.N. compounds and civilian neighborhoods, what is Israel to do to stop the bombardment of its land and its people? Nothing?

Israel is not the Great Satan. (I think that phrase was and is used to describe the U.S.) It is not a fascist state bent on genocide, although that is a common characterization. It is country of people who sought a home in the land of their ancient ancestors, a democracy, with a free press, a state influenced by religion, but in the truest sense not a “religious state” such as Iran, where religious leaders actually rule. Israel has been under attack since its very inception. A country where no café, no pizzeria, no dance club, no Bar Mitzvah celebration or Passover Seder, no shopping mall, no public bus is free from the threat of a bomb that may kill or maim dozens of innocent people at any time. This has been true for decades. So, if you were a citizen of such a country, and knew people who had been killed or injured by such bombs, or rockets, mortars or missiles, what would you want your government to do? Bring humanitarian aide to your attackers?

Today over 180 trucks filled with humanitarian supplies were sent by Israel into Gaza. The Israelis are not monsters. Israel has the right to protect its people. And in so doing, to use the only methods available to a nation to stop the harassment and murder of its people. Israel, like any other nation, has the right to be judged by the reality of its situation, and not by a yardstick that is never applied to anyone else—not even its enemies.

* Within 48-hours of the recent unilateral Israeli cease-fire, Hamas was firing mortar shells into Israel--again.

Does Gay Marriage Threaten Family Structure?

2008-11-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

A friend commented on my recent post about the recently-passed California Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, which I opposed, asking what I thought about the relationship between gay marriage and the nuclear family being the basic structure of human society. I guess, in response, one might ask other questions about the basic structure of human society.

We tend to think of the society we know now as being what the world was always like. That, however is far from the truth. Humans are essentially tribal in nature, and while children spring from families, family structure and the defined role of adults in the family structure has been fluid throughout human history.

Cave men and women lived in caverns or trees or settlements in large groups, sleeping in giant human crowds and raising children was a community affair. Some tribes who live far from or technological, developed societies continue to do similar things today. As Hillary said, it takes a village. Ancient families, such as those in biblical times often included marriages with multiple wives, and sexual liaisons with servants or slaves. In the absence of modern birth control methods, those extra-marital activities often produced children. What was the family structure like then?

Further, looking back just a century or two, people just didn't live as long as they do in America today. People died of infection and illness at startling rates, so families couldn't be enduring because members passed away. Women died in childbirth or from related complications. Men were injured in their roles as farmers or hunter-gatherers and little could be done medically to save the seriously injured (by today's standards).

So perhaps in the 20th century we created and/or promoted the myth of the ideal 1950's family. Dad went to work in his Ford or Chevy, Mom stayed home, baked cookies, cleaned the house with Spic and Span, and everyone was happy. The reality was and is far from that. Families struggled, men died in wars, women had to go out to work or decided that careers were more fulfilling than full-time home-making and family-raising. I wonder if, other than perhaps on TV, this ideal American family with it's supposed wonderful health and structure ever really existed. Among my friends, as I grew up in the 1950's and 60's there were divorces, career debacles, illness, accidental death, alcoholism, wife battering, sexual abuse, etc. This was in a middle class suburb, that, superficially, looked like Ozzie and Harriet might have lived there. But behind the closed doors there was a good deal of misery.

And what about today--the 21st Century? There are a greater percentage of working parents than previously seen; a larger proportion of families are in single parent, mostly female-led households. What affect does the family structure in those families have on children? What about poverty, or adult drug use, unemployment, etc.? I don't see the society rushing in to pass laws against any of these problems, or fixing them, out of concern about the affect they might have on family structure or the children who live in those families.

So that gets us back to Proposition 8 and the ban on gay marriage. I can think of many permutations of families that lack males, or lack females, but those missing members don't make those families fundamentally pathological. If Dad dies in Iraq and children are raised by Mom and Grandmother because Dad is gone does that mean the lives of the children will be ruined? Or that the structure of the society will unravel? Millions of Americans were raised in such family situations and are doing just fine. And many others, raised in two-parent families are in prison, or in a thousand other ways are doing very poorly by most measures.

So the notion that children raised in families by two men, or two women are going to be damaged, or that the society will suffer some universal harm is ridiculous on the face of it. And what is it those against gay marriage would have us believe? If two competent, loving women have children, raise them with love, support, concern, encouragement and care, that even so, the children will be somehow ruined by their imaginings about what goes on behind the bedroom door on some nights? Or because they see the two women hugging or kissing each other? Now that certainly would lead to the instantaneous and total dissolution of the world as we know it, wouldn't it? I mean, if two women actually kissed each other. Shocking! Wait, I'll have to tell my wife never to kiss my adult daughter ever again. I mean, if a child saw that, they might be ruined for life by the very sight of it!

Whatever those who favor a ban on gay marriage say, their opposition to it is simple bigotry. Girls are supposed to like boys, and if your constitution doesn't fit that model then you don't deserve basic human rights. So what if your lifetime partner is hospitalized and you can't see them. Who cares if you bought a house together and now that your partner is dead his family who despised him, rejected him and disapproved of his lifestyle is grabbing legal control of all of his property? I suppose the supporters of the ban on gay marriage would say, "You're gay, you don't deserve anything. You're an abomination."

Well, the Good Book says many things that we should do, but we no longer do. We don't have any altars where we slaughter animals and roast them as burnt offerings. We don't immediately kill children who curse their parents, either. There are a thousand things that the early Judaic writings forbid or say should result in severe punishments that are commonly done today. Religious groups pick and choose at will. So pointing to where it says you shouldn't do this or that doesn't impress me, and is in it's very nature disingenuous. You can't say everyone must follow chapter 43 verse 7 to the letter, and then decide that we really don't have to pay attention to verse 8 because nobody likes it. I'm sorry my fundamentalist friends, but that is simple hypocrisy.

So, in the end, the family structure argument is an empty one. Whether or not children will turn out to be healthy, happy people, and honest, productive citizens is controlled by many variables. The most important involve the love and skill that those in parenting roles can bring to the task of raising children. The sexual orientation of the parents, well, like their hair color, or skin color, or for that matter their affection for baseball, these have very little to do with whether they are good parents. Good parents not only come in all shapes, sizes and colors, they come with varying sexual orientations, and in all kinds of family structures and configurations. Having a home with a mother and a father, and even going to church (synagogue, temple, mosque, sweat lodge, or drum circle), are no guarantee of a positive outcome for a child, a family or a society.

LET ME KNOW IF YOU'D LIKE TO BE REMOVED

2008-11-05T18:54:00.000-08:00

I have started a blog. I am new to all of this blogging stuff and still have much to learn about exactly how it works. So, I am seeking your help.

After writing several posts (each entry is called a "post") and noting that no one read them, I realized I needed to do something different. I mean, it was clear that no one knew about the blog, so why or how would they read it? So this presented a dilemma for me. At first I didn't want to be presumptuous and sign people up for my blog. But in talking with my twenty-something daughter I realized that informing others about your blog, and when you have written a new post is just part of it. So, I if you are reading this, I have taken the liberty of adding your email address to the list of names of people who are informed each time I write a new post. I hope that's okay.

If you enjoy reading the blog, and I hope you do, then you can do me a favor. Sign up to "follow" the blog. That's basically a way of subscribing, a proactive step that puts you on the list of people who will be informed when a I write a new post. If you sign up to "follow" my blog that helps me, because the number of people I can put on the list to inform of new posts is limited. If you are following, then I can add other friends to the list of people who are informed about my blog, expanding the circle.

One more thing. If you don't want to read the blog, or if I am clogging your mailbox with political ranting you disagree with, or would prefer not to receive or be notified of, that's fine. Just let me know and I will be happy to remove you from the list of people who are informed of new posts.

My most recent political post, written last night, is about California Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage, which narrowly passed. Take a look at what I have to say, and I encourage you to comment in response to the post.

Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, we have witnessed an historic event in the election of an African American to the presidency. The country is going through a very troubled time, and I hope you share the optimism I feel that with new leadership the country can get on a better path. A path that will allow the restoration of middle class wealth, our international stature, the basic constitutional rights of people and last but not least, peace.

2008-11-04T20:50:00.000-08:00

OBAMA!

DO YOU HATE GAY PEOPLE?

2008-11-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

Election Night 2008 (11/4/08) About 7:30 pm
Hopeful, but the outcome still seems uncertain.

Rancho Peñasquitos, a typical suburban bedroom community about 20 miles north of downtown San Diego, became a battleground last night in the desperate fight in California for the rights of two human beings who are in love, and committed to their relationship, to marry one another . Supporters of California Proposition 8 which would ban gay marriage were gathered on some street corners, and opponents of Prop. 8 were gathered on others. There was even some intermixing, but you can be relieved because no real violence broke out, and no gay people were converted into heterosexuals, nor vice versa. It was noisy and police were called. They came, but just watched. Eventually. the rush-hour parade of traffic waned, people got tired, hoarse and cold, and went home.

Proposition 8 has attracted tens of millions of dollars from all over the country. Gay people want the right to marry or have their marriages be sustained legally, and religious groups want to stop gay people from getting married. I must say, it's troubling that the Catholic Church and the Church of LDS (Mormons) are so strongly in favor of a constitutional amendment to deny people their basic rights.

The history of the role of churches in political life in America is a least disturbing. When early pioneers fell in love with American Indian women and took them as wives, churches condemned the unions as godless, as abominations. When, a little further on in American history, African Americans and people from the Caribbean started to get together with White folks, churches again defended the dominant paradigm of racism and bigotry, declaring that marriage was impossible, illegal, violated religious codes, and could not be tolerated. Even well into the 20th century racism was preached from the pulpit, integration was declared a plot of the Devil, and the power and prerogatives of the White power structure were defended, supported and blessed. As a society, as a culture, as human beings we have largely grown past all of this ridiculous racist hatred. There are a few on the fringe who cling to the old paradigm, holding Hitler as their hero, or declaring that the only solution is to distrust those of a different color and separate the races, etc. The evolution of our society has already proven that untrue, but some are not convinced.

One thing that is convincing, is while people may use membership in a church as a definition of whether or not a person is a good and decent person, a citizen worthy to hold office and lead, some churches themselves have fared poorly in being our guide to a just, equal and morally admirable society. Human nature being what it is, churches have been turned into instruments of a political machine, unable to guide or lead our society and instead being proponents of hate, discrimination, inequality and the domination of one group of people by others. I am not talking about medieval times here—don’t support the church’s position on abortion? Well you can’t take communion. Happen to be gay and born into a Mormon family? Sorry, there simply is no place for you within our LDS church or community. Is this the love and acceptance their putative role model would have wanted?

That Elizabeth Dole thought she could win an election for the U.S. Senate by accusing her opponent, Kay Hagen, of associating with “godless Americans” or of being godless herself is even more troubling. (Thankfully, she turned out to be wrong.) Being religious is not a sine qua non of being a good, decent, upstanding person. It can be part of that, but 16% of Americans consider themselves atheists, and I’ve known a few. To suggest that someone who isn’t religious is a bad person, or that lacking a specific religion or set of religious practices and memberships means a person lacks a moral compass is worse than wrong, it is simple bigotry.

Mindless hatred, or worse is a basic human ability—you are not like me so you must be evil. Sounds pretty primitive, no? Something someone in an isolated jungle tribe might believe, “Oh there are some White people. They are not like us; we must kill them, or at least make them slaves or prisoners. Certainly they must never marry anyone of our kind!” Yes, or the people next door who regularly attend a church, synagogue, temple or mosque, and of course your local terrorist ala Tim McVeigh, or the one who is building is bomb right now in some distant corner of the world. All, my friends, believing they are truly doing the work of their god or gods. Religion is not universally, or unilaterally good, or at least it isn’t always pressed into good purposes.

What really gets me though is the notion that strong heterosexual families are somehow harmed by gay folks getting married. Simply put, they aren’t. I’m a heterosexual guy who has been married to a wonderful woman for 35 years. Do I care if the gay couple across town or across the street ties the knot? Is my marriage threatened? Of course, No. I have two daughters, both involved with boyfriends now. But if one of them woke up some morning in the future and decided she was done with men and really wanted to be with a woman, would that crush me. No. The Higher Power, whatever it may be, made all of us, all colors, so many faiths, and yes, even different sexual orientations. Get used to it. Churches tried to kill homosexuality for millennia and never succeeded. None will succeed now, only make lives more difficult, and in a few cases, ruin them and separate people from families who otherwise might have loved and accepted them.

Several years ago, while working as a psychotherapist, I led a group of men who were gay. Once we had gotten to know each other quite well I asked them when each of them knew he was homosexual. Every single one of those men felt their earliest, pre-adolescent sexual stirrings in relation to other males. Crushes on teachers were same sex, embarrassing arousal in school classrooms, in response to other boys. These guys didn’t choose homosexuality; it chose them. (A growing body of research literature supports this.) They still had the choice to fake a heterosexual lifestyle (some had tried that), to live without physical intimacy, (some had tried that), and all ultimately came to feel that they were and should rightfully acknowledge they there were homosexual. Many actively pursued that lifestyle, some promiscuously, some seeking and finding long-term commitment. Does that make them bad people? I hardly see how. Does their sexual orientation mean they should be denied the right to marry? Good Heavens, NO! Again, because heterosexuality is the dominant paradigm, does that mean we should condemn, enslave, harass, imprison, cast out or deny basic human rights to those who aren’t like us?

In the end we have to ask, What are we? Are we containers of hate and exclusion? Do we exclude the man or woman who loves another man or woman the way we would exclude the murderer, the child molester, the rapist, the miscreant, the thief? All of these can still marry, even from behind bars. We deny the right to marry to no other group of people. And in the end to deny gay men and lesbian women the right to marry is to deny their very humanity. Oh, yes, and our own.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THIS ELECTION

2008-10-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

Here are my recommendations about how to vote in the election:

President/Vice Pres
Barack Obama
Joe Biden

California State Propositions

1A Yes

2 Yes

3 Yes

4 No

5 Yes

6 No

7 No

8 No

9 No

10 No

11 No

12 Yes

City of San Diego Propositions

A Yes

B No

C No

D Yes

Feel free to post a comment if you want more info about how any of these decisions were reached.

DO SOMETHING! REGISTER AND VOTE

2008-10-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,

As you may know the upcoming presidential election is now about only 20 daysaway. In order to be able to vote in the election one must register in California no later than October 20, 2008, so time is running out. I urge you to register now and vote in the November 4th election. You may go to the website of the San Diego Registrar of Voters for information on the various ways of registering. Their main office is at the intersection of Ruffin Rd. and Clairemont Mesa Blvd. in the Clairemont Mesa section of San Diego. Here is the link to go to their website:http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/voters/Eng/Ereg.shtml

This is a very important presidential election, and some pundits have said it may be the most significant election of our lifetimes. The country is facing serious economic problems, we are at war in two nations, energy prices go between too expensive and unbelievably high, and many working folks like us are facing hard times related to mortgage loans, and wages that don't go up fast enough to keep up with rising costs. Health care and health insurance are out of reach for many, and there are several other pressing problems that must be addressed in the next few years--the environment and the need for alternative energy sources, poverty, schools, mass transit and crumbling infrastructure, and of course, protecting retirement income for working Americans. Your vote is one of the most powerful tools you have to make your voice heard in the running of our country. Whether Candidate A or Candidate Bgets elected president has a profound affect on the direction of our country, how it is seen in the world, whether or not we will go to war, who gets appointed to the Supreme Court, and a thousand other things. The most important thing is to make your voice heard by casting the ballot. Also, there are several key propositions on the ballot (in California) for this election that have to do with civil rights, mass transit, abortion, and other issues. People get emotional about these issues, and I understand why. The decisions made by the voters about these laws may very well have an affect on your friends, family, coworkers, or people in your social circle. Make your voice heard on these issues by registering now and voting in the election.Finally, people are running for state offices such as seats in the State Assembly and State Senate. These are the people who decide on the state¹sbudget, and who make the decisions about how much funding various services will get. They actually make decisions that influence whether or not you will be able to continue in your job. Don't you want to cast a vote to decide who will be your state senator or assembly member? Don't you want to pick the person who will represent your interests, your priorities, and the positions on issues that are important to you? Again, I'm not telling you to vote for this candidate or that one. I'm just trying to persuade you to register and vote.

This election is your chance to do something reallyimportant, really significant, really meaningful. Do it. Register andvote.

The Problem With the Right's "Small Government" Myth

2008-10-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

For many years now the Republican machine, including those in power, and the army of right wing radio hosts, TV verbal assassins (i.e. O'Reilly and his ilk), and Fox News have been spouting the call for smaller government. They have also been trying to tie together the notion that government intervention and "big government" are the same, and that together they mean higher taxes for everyday people.

Well, folks, one doesn't have to look very far to see today's example of such Republicans with campaign bullhorns shouting the same old story. Just listen to any current McCain or Palin stump speech. We're the mavericks, and we're going to put an end to big government, they say. Setting the maverick issue aside here for a moment, let's look at where all of this talk about smaller government has led us.

I am in my 50's and so remember the America of the past. That American country, one of Democratic and Republican presidents and periods of movement to the right and the left was a nation to be cherished. We had our problems, and I could name many, but our food supply was safe, our banking and economic system were solid and an example for the entire world, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) tried to get dangerous products off the market, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used real science to guide its decisions. That America is gone, Scarlet, "gone with the wind", and the wind was the call for "smaller government".

The magic word I am about to use is that right wing boogeyman: REGULATION. Let me tell you something, if regulation will keep our food safe, keep our economic and banking system dependable and reliable, and result in good drugs that work being on the market, then I am all for it. We don't need melamine in our pet food or baby formula, we don't need meat with unkillable mad cow prions in it, we don't need chicken with salmonella, and we don't need an economic system based on the bundling of bad-risk loans into A-rated securities that turn out to be worth little more than the paper they are printed on. There is a single, proven solution to these types of problems, and that is regulation, government regulation.

We don't need smaller government. Just listen to the news or read the paper and you can see that our country is rife with problems caused by the absence of government regulation. We need wiser government. Government has a job, and when it fails to do its job, the result is a more dangerous society for all of us.

MOOSE DRESSER MIRES HERSELF IN THE MUD

2008-10-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

The latest salvo from the McCain-Palin camp just demonstrates how desperate they are. Palin accuses Barack Obama of palling around with terrorists. Can the political scene in America get any more absurd? Obama responds that he was 8-years old when the fellow he served on a board with (as an adult) was a radical Weatherman. I'm sure the Dems, as clever as they are, won't be looking into what dirty deeds Sarah Palin or John McCain were into when they were 8.

I am almost embarrassed to say today that there was a time when I actually had some respect for John McCain. Whatever once existed is now gone forever. There are many, many women involved in politics for whom I have great respect, but the selection of Sarah Palin was ill-conceived political theater. I am not the least bit surprised that it is now backfiring on them. As the pundits have said, expectations were so LOW for her in the debate that if she didn't crumble into giggles and tears it would have been judged a "success". But she just kept repeating sections of her stump speech, and as one Republican said, answering the questions she asked herself.

But McCain-Palin has an essential problem. They keep acting like they have something to say, but in fact all they are doing is PRETENDING they do. They promise change, but their platform is more of the same. They claim to be mavericks, while reciting the same of Republican saws against regulation and big government that have been used to persuade the voting public in the past that Republicans have something to offer them.

In fact, Republicans, for many years now, have only had the interests of their super-rich donors and mega-corporations in their sites, and the rest of us could have stagnating income, high taxes, and environmental degradation and as part of the leftovers of what they were doing. Not to mention a ridiculous and immensely expensive war against a country that never threatened us, had no WMD's, and was NOT a supporter of Al Queda. Oh yes, and the current economic crisis that was completely the result of an ABSENCE of regulation.

It's high time that we had a Democratic president get in there and start to clean up this mess. And the more Democrats we send to Congress to support him the better.