Bette Noir's Open Salon Blog

Bookburning for Jesus

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 16:08:44 -0400

Dove World Outreach (Bargain) Center

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. –C.S. Lewis

Without any other background or clues, how does the phrase “Dove World Outreach” hit you? A small percentage of you might guess that those words describe an aggressive marketing campaign for a popular moisturizing soap. That wouldn’t be a bad guess because, it just so happens that, since the 1990’s, Dove soap has grown from a US-only product to one of Unilever’s biggest global brands. Nevertheless, you would be wrong. Similarly, if you have a more metaphorical tendency, you would be wrong if you guessed that “Dove World Outreach” is an international congress of anti-war peace activists. A very few might even venture a guess that DWO has something to do with pigeon racing.

The disquieting truth is that Dove World Outreach is the touchy-feely facade for a suspiciously “for-profit business in tax-exempt clothing” that describes itself as a New Testament Apostolic Church (with one location, worldwide – Gainesville, Florida) that is run more like a cult than a church. DWO might have managed to fly under the radar longer except that its founders and senior pastors, Dr. Terry and Sylvia Jones, like money and attention a little too much for their own good. And so it is that they decided to jump on the Islamaphobia bandwagon and demonstrate their patriotism and devotion to Christian values by announcing their intention to publicly burn a batch of Korans on September 11^th. Dr. Jones is also the author of the treatise Islam is of the Devil and sole source vendor of the spin-off products — Islam is of the Devil t-shirts, baseball caps and coffee mugs.

The shirts were premiered during “Flaunt Your Bigotry in School Day,” in Gainesville, in which parents (pastors and congregants of DWO) sent their kids off to the first day of school decked out in Islam is of the Devil t-shirts. Here’s what that looks like:

Christian Child Abuse

The usual First Amendment brouhaha ensued when the kids were asked to lose/cover up the shirts while in school. When the kids followed the instruction of their loving parents and refused, they were sent home. A bigger and better encore performance was staged the following day; but it appears that the school prevailed, in the long run.

The ACLU expressed their dismay over the sentiment expressed on the shirts but duly filed a lawsuit defending the childrens’ right to wear them under the First Amendment; legal counsel for the school district stated that:

“a school may regulate a student’s free speech rights if the exercise of those rights materially and substantially interferes with maintaining appropriate discipline at school, or if the conduct impinges on the rights of other students.”

The kids will probably outgrow the shirts by the time that debate is sorted out.

* * *

The history of Dove World Outreach is no less colorful. It all starts with a vision (as is so often the case) in which Dr. Terry Jones discovers how very special he is and what God has planned for his own special fellow. Forthwith, Dr Jones picks up his wife and three kids and decamps to Cologne, Germany to carry out his special mission – which Dr. Jones describes as Restore! Rebuild! Destroy!

As with similar missions, down through the ages, not everything went swimmingly for Dr. Jones. No one in the Jones’ entourage spoke a word of German and no one besides Dr. Terry had had a vision or heard from God. An interview printed in the Apostolic magazine The Voice gives some idea of how things went for the Jones family in Cologne:

THE VOICE: How would you describe the spiritual opposition to Christianity in Germany? What is the spiritual climate like there?

DR. JONES: I would say the opposition to Christianity in Germany is nothing we have ever experienced in the States. Because of the history of Germany I believe it’s easy to understand the opposition to Christianity in Germany as very violent. We have received here a lot of persecution, whether it be from the government, the news media, the school system, the city itself. I would say the spiritual climate and opposition to Christianity in Germany is one that manifests itself in a very violent way. We had a man kill his wife, who was a part of our church, because she had converted to Christianity.

DR. JONES: As I already stated, we have had much opposition, whether it be from parents, the school, the government, the news media, but I believe that probably our biggest opposition has come from the Christians within the community. I believe that has been one of our biggest oppositions through over 24 years of ministry here. Within that time we have never been accepted in the city or with our vision or what we do. I believe that has been one of our biggest oppositions.

OK, let’s back up here a bit the “opposition to Christianity in Germany is very violent” . . . Huh? Perhaps the disconnect here has something to do with one’s definition of “Christianity.” When the Germans invited the Joneses to leave their country it had more to do with things like “tax evasion,” disregard for child labor laws, misuse of church funds, charges of cultism, and lying about the largely decorative use of the “Dr.” prefix that Jones appends to his name and which Germans take rather seriously (and for which he ultimately paid a fine of €3000).

In case anyone finds those rumors hyberbolic or unsubstantiated, Emma Jones, Dr. Terry’s estranged daughter is happy to corroborate and expand upon the sins of the father. Actually, it’s pretty evident from the attention that Jones is getting here in the US, lately, that he has simply moved his religion-for-profit business to Gainesville, FL where, I suppose, he’s expecting a little more in the way of religious tolerance (except for Muslims, of course).

Actually, this Christian scofflaw stance is part and parcel of Jones’ particular brand of Christianity; Jones, like Sarah Palin and growing legions of wealthy, politically connected American conservative Christians are practicing Dominionists who believe that it is their duty to seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action. The goal is either a nation governed by Christians, or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law.

Once again, in The Voice interview, Jones makes his thoughts on Dominionism pretty clear:

THE VOICE: We are beginning to hear more about the Kingdom and how God has given us dominion. What does it really mean to take dominion?

DR. JONES: I believe that it means something I just mentioned. I believe that taking of dominion obviously includes prayer and spiritual warfare. It obviously does mean the recognizing of the strongholds that hold every nation in bondage. Every nation has its own type of strongholds. In Germany there is very much fear and control. In America a stronghold is rebellion and selfishness. In the ministry area a stronghold is having your own ministry, not willing to submit, not willing to be apart of the team, not willing to give up your benefit for the common church or the calling. I believe taking dominion practically means starting businesses. I believe that it is very important for the church to accumulate as much property and buildings as possible. I believe that dominion means also in the natural that we own and we posses. We do not rent from someone else, we are not renters of a building from a heathen nation or company but we buy and posses our own buildings. With that we are taking dominion. With that we are having a say over that area, what we do inside that building around that building because we own that building. We have taken dominion. We have taken control.

Therefore, it is less than surprising to find Pastor Jones setting up on a tax-exempt 20 acre plot in Gainesville to shepherd his 80-person congregation (which includes four pastoral families). To support his little dominion the pastor peddles his new book, Islam is of the Devil, as well as the associated spinoff products. He accepts cash donations via major credit cards and PayPal. But his real cash cow, here as in Germany, is his for-profit enterprise TSandCompany, which until very recently was a fixture on eBay. The TS is for Terry and Sylvia and that pretty much says it. TSandCompany is/was(?) an ever-growing antiques and vintage furniture company doing business all up and down the US East Coast, complete with showrooms and a fleet of trucks. The real secret of TSandCompany’s success though, is the free-labor provided by church volunteers who do everything from packing, delivering and picking up furniture to collecting food donations from area businesses and even dumpster-diving for discarded packing materials and inventory.

Ex church-members describe 12-14 hour workdays for no pay except room and board on church property which consists of low-income housing bought up by Jones in Gainesville neighborhoods that have seen better days. The Engels, a couple that emigrated from the Jones’ Cologne, said that for more than a year, they lived in an apartment in Pineridge in northwest Gainesville with their two young sons and worked more than 40 hours a week unpaid. The Engels said they didn’t pay rent for their apartment and that all their meals were provided by the church’s Lisa Jones House, which the church describes as an “outreach to the poor” that uses food from the local food bank. I guess if you’re a church member with no income, you qualify.

In an interview with the Gainesville Sun, the Engels described their stay at DWO this way:

“The couple, who were married in the Cologne church, described feeling mental or emotional pressure at the Gainesville church. Jennifer Engel said the pastors tried to convince her that if they left Gainesville to return to Germany, she would be damned.

“It wasn’t until after they left that the Engels say they realized they had been sucked into a rhetoric of preaching that the only way to heaven was to work for the church.”

Terry Jones told The Sun that all employees for TS and Company are church members who volunteer their time. Emma Jones, the pastor’s daughter puts it differently:

“It’s all about how much did you work, how much profit did you bring in,” said Emma Jones, the 29-year-old daughter of Terry Jones and his deceased first wife, Lisa Jones. “He made 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds work 12-hour days.”

Emma Jones said she is speaking out against her father and the church she grew up in with the hope of helping others leave what she calls a “cult” that “forced us with oppression to be obedient.”

* * *

The training ground for DWO’s workforce is something Jones calls Dove World Outreach Academy. The “academy” (with a current enrollment of three) is Sylvia Jones’ “special mission” and, according to information published in February on the academy’s Web site, it is a “training place for loyalty and discipline.”

“The main part of training is, the students live on the (Dove World Outreach Center property), they eat and sleep here, and work in the areas we offer, the (Lisa Jones House), TS and company or Dove Charismatic Ministries, the church,” stated an introduction published in February on the Web site and signed by Sylvia Jones. “Going through the whole process for three years breaks the pride, because the students need to humble themselves not only under God’s mighty hand but under the hand of man as well.”

Not to mention that “it takes a village” to support the Joneses.

The Academy’s “Rule Book” (which has undergone recent revisions like so many other aspects of the “church”) was described thus by the Cologne contingent:

“According to the original rule book, rules for those in the academy – mostly young adults who can be seen on the church property wearing khaki cargo pants as part of their uniform – include being obedient to all commands, asking for permission to talk and using only the academy e-mail account for personal correspondence. In the original rule book, academy attendees also are banned from dining in restaurants or eating sweets and cakes, with weekly weigh-ins to achieve a weight goal.”

“Visits from family and friends are not allowed, and occasions such as weddings, funerals or birthdays are no exception, according to the original rule book.”

According to property tax records pulled by The Sun:

All six properties, four in Phoenix and two in Pineridge, were purchased between March 2006 and August 2007 for a combined $647,500. Financing information for the properties was not immediately available.

Terry and Sylvia Jones also own 4.42 acres of vacant land in Chiefland purchased in 2004 for about $28,000.

The couple purchased a house in Slidell, La., in January 2007 for $303,900.

And they own a condo in the Paradise Island Towers Condo on Treasure Island, which was purchased before Terry Jones’ first wife died.

Terry Jones declined an interview to discuss his property holdings.

* * *

As the Bible says, though, “to everything there is a season” and it looks like the Joneses season might be coming to a close. The church property is listed on the real estate market for $4.2 million, TSand Company suddenly no longer operate on eBay (at least not under that name) but, as recently as this past May, the Joneses were advertising jobs for delivery drivers on ChristianCareerCenter.com

Oddly enough, the final straw seems to have been not the cult mentality, nor the slave labor issue, nor even the anti-Islamic book-burning. It was actually a DWO junior pastor’s rant about an openly homosexual candidate running for mayor of Gainesville that made the walls come tumbling down.

Here’s an account from a web-cached article on an aggregator site:

“In the weeks leading up to the run-off between Lowe and candidate Don Marsh, Dove World posted two videos, one on YouTube and another on the church’s Web site, in which a junior pastor, Wayne Sapp, warned against voting for Lowe, claiming he is “trying to convert Gainesville into Homoville.”

“Here in Gainesville,” Sapp said in the YouTube video, “they’re getting ready to have a run-off election between two candidates, and one of them is openly a homo, gay, fag – whatever you want to call him. We can’t have it.”

“The six-minute video, which was replete with offensive and outrageous rhetoric, was soon removed from YouTube for violating the site’s terms of service, but another appeared on the church’s Web site a few days later, to drive the point home.”

“[Homosexuality] is a sin that leads to hell,” Sapp continued. “[A] public office such as mayor, governor, president, should not be held by such people, because they’re perverts, they’re sexually perverted…. They cannot restrain themselves.”

“Sapp claimed he reached out to more than 100 churches in Gainesville to join the campaign against Lowe. To his disappointment, none would do so.”

On the heels of that tirade, Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Dove World Outreach Center’s violation of its tax-exempt status by getting involved in politics. According to Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, tax-exempt organizations can’t “participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.

In the meantime, Pastor Jones told a reporter from The Sun that he believes the church is acting within its constitutional rights. But, as Lynn pointed out, “in fact, tax exemption is extended on a number of conditions, one of which bars intervention in partisan politics. Houses of worship may not endorse or oppose candidates.”

In his letter to the IRS, Lynn stated:

“Dove World Outreach Center,” Lynn continued, “has violated that standard, and its senior pastor admitted it. I urge the Internal Revenue Service to investigate this matter promptly and make certain that the law is enforced.”

Not to be outdone, the Alachua County Property Appraiser is also investigating the church’s exempt status when it comes to property taxes but for other reasons, primarily involving the church’s for-profit operation of TS and Company, which sells furniture through eBay, on the church’s 20-acre property. According to Florida state law, property — regardless of who owns it — is only exempt if it’s used for exempt purposes like holding church services.

One can only hope that DWO’s current problems will serve as a cautionary tale to those Dominionists and other assorted Christian soldiers who don’t take laws and constitutions seriously, let alone ethics, morals or social mores. I wouldn’t count on it, though; people who think that God is talking to them generally express disdain for earthly rules and regs. But at least, maybe the Alachua County Fire Marshall can put the kibosh to the book-burning . . . ?

Technorati Tags: Dove World Outreach Center, Dr. Terry Jones, Sylvia Jones, Emma Jones, Wayne Sapp, Gainesville Sun, dominionism, islamaphobia, homophobia, separation of church and state, tex-exempt status, TSandCompany

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The Unbearable Awesomeness of Wikileaks

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:07:20 -0400

Yesterday the world changed and a new epoch was ushered in with Wikileak’s release of the Afghan War Diary, 2004 – 2010. In case you’ve been vacationing off-planet, Afghan War Diary is a compilation of “raw data” derived from 90,000 leaked ground reports from the war in Afghanistan (approximately 15,000 have been held back for possible redaction before their release). The importance of this event is certainly not that the data uncovers shocking new revelations about how abysmally the war in Afghanistan has been conducted – an epic fail of such proportions is hard to cover up completely no matter how obedient the national media are. The true awesomeness of this development is that, in one brilliant and well-coordinated play, the rules of the game have been changed – forever after – and, not only has the playing field been leveled, it’s been moved out of town – no more home-field advantage.

Part of the genius of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange’s release was his gambit to assure that mainstream media would not obstruct or trivialize the importance of the leak – by giving them the scoop. Wikileaks provided the roughly 91,000 reports dated from January 2004 to December 2009 to three media outlets, The New York Times, the Guardian of London and Der Spiegel of Germany, under agreement to publish their individual coverage simultaneously on Sunday.

The “home team” however seems to be determined to ignore the change in game plan, at least for now. Despite a “heads up” from their loyal friends at The New York Times, the administration’s official flat-footed response was noticeably confused, and confusing. In my opinion, no one did a better job of parsing the White House’ official response than Jay Rosen; here are his reactions posted on NYU’s Pressthink blog:

The initial response from the White House was extremely unimpressive:

This leak will harm national security. (As if those words still had some kind of magical power, after all the abuse they have been party to.)

There’s nothing new here. (Then how could the release harm national security?)

Wikileaks is irresponsible; they didn’t even try to contact us! (Hold on: you’re hunting the guy down and you’re outraged that he didn’t contact you?)

Wikileaks is against the war in Afghanistan; they’re not an objective news source. (So does that mean the documents they published are fake?)

“The period of time covered in these documents… is before the President announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.” (Okay, so now we too know the basis for the President’s decision: and that’s a bad thing?)

A great follow-up (that we’ll never see) from the White House would be a comprehensive analysis of how the “revolutionary Obama” strategy addresses shortcomings in the “lackluster Bush” strategy. For example, to the best of my knowledge, American taxpayers are still underwriting billions of dollars to continue the Sisyphean task of training an Afghan National Police Force.

As Tom Engelhardt put it, recently:

The Pentagon . . . hasn’t hesitated to use at least $25-27 billion to “train” and “mentor” the Afghan military and police – and after each round of training failed to produce the expected results, to ask for even more money, and train them again.

Engelhardt then follows up with the questions that lay bare the Coalition’s utter fecklessness in this endeavor:

“And here is the oddest thing of all, though no one even bothers to mention it in this context: the Taliban haven’t had tens of billions of dollars in foreign training funds; they haven’t had years of advice from the best U.S. and NATO advisers that money can buy; they haven’t had private contractors like DynCorp teaching them how to fight and police, and strangely enough, they seem to have no problem fighting. They are not undermanned, infiltrated by followers of Hamid Karzai, or particularly corrupt. They may be illiterate and may not be fluent in English, but they are ready, in up-to platoon-sized units, to attack heavily fortified U.S. military bases, Afghan prisons, a police headquarters, and the like with hardly a foreign mentor in sight.”

“Consider it, then, a modern miracle in reverse that the U.S. has proven incapable of training a competent Afghan force in a country where arms are the norm, fighting has for decades seldom stopped, and the locals are known for their war-fighting traditions.”

And if you think the Afghan Police Academy idea is stupid and wasteful, just go read Tom’s entire article describing the US plan to resurrect the Afghan Air Force (as soon as they can learn English) and procure some reconditioned Russian ‘coptors that the Afghans took a shine to in the last war. The timeline for that project? US Air Force personnel: guestimate 2016 – 2018 depending on how well the Afghans take to English, “the official language of the cockpit.” There are 450 US Air Force personnel tasked with this project @ $1 million/year/flight instructor plus, of course, pay and bennies for the Afghan recruits, and let’s not forget procurement and maintenance of the fleet of Russian helicopters – you do the math . . . .

What has changed, recently, was that the new Afghan “police academy” graduates will eventually be dealing with a possible “conflict of interest” with the freshly minted localized militias (that nobody wants to call militias) that Gen. Petraeus is so proud of successfully lobbying for.

Evidently, Catch-22 is alive and well in today’s army . . .

* * *

The Pentagon, for its part, has harrumphed out a hasty announcement that it is launching a “robust probe” of the Wikileaks matter (to differentiate, I suppose, from the “rather lame probes” that it launches in the event of collateral damage leaks). That development is curious in the face of their much ballyhooed apprehension, months ago, of Bradley Manning, an Army information analyst stationed in Iraq (not Afghanistan), charged with leaking classified information to Wikileaks. The Pentagon is acting suspiciously in this, perhaps they know that there are many leaks in their midst, or, maybe they just already know it’s not Manning but it’s good to have a guy in custody.

And the State Department, on the basis of leaked reports that the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI is aiding and abetting the Taliban insurgents, is threatening to take back the $7 billion aid package that it proudly bestowed on Pakistan a few weeks ago, if the ISI doesn’t cut it out. Of course none of this is “news” and Hillary Clinton knew it when she delivered this money bomb on her latest trip. Ah well, it’s taxpayers’ money, there’s more where that came from . . .

* * *

The real importance of this event is so hard to grasp and appreciate fully that it’s going to take some time to digest. If you look hard enough, though, a number of people have noticed and are scratching the surface in credible ways.

The following are excerpts from the first impressions of respected sources on media and the new news ecosystem; taken together, I believe that their comments comprise a cogent analysis of the unprecedented actions taken by Julian Assange and the possible impact that those actions might have on the future of information distribution, transparency and governmental accountability.

From Jay Rosen of NYU’s PressThink blog:

If you go to the Wikileaks Twitter profile, next to “location” it says: Everywhere. Which is one of the most striking things about it: the world’s first stateless news organization. I can’t think of any prior examples of that. (Dave Winer in the comments: “The blogosphere is a stateless news organization.”) Wikileaks is organized so that if the crackdown comes in one country, the servers can be switched on in another. This is meant to put it beyond the reach of any government or legal system. That’s what so odd about the White House crying, ‘They didn’t even contact us!

Appealing to national traditions of fair play in the conduct of news reporting misunderstands what Wikileaks is about: the release of information without regard for national interest. In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new. Just as the Internet has no terrestrial address or central office, neither does Wikileaks.

And I can’t resist including a reader’s comment on Rosen’s article, because it says so much:

we enter an era now where we begin to be conscious of “collective consciousness” and its role as “prime mover” of the “world” and its events …”

analysis of the various parts and components proceeds only fitfully, because we do not yet have a language of whole …

the problem? adjusting to a pre-existing global reality larger than the individual thinking mind can grasp …

consciousness itself, however, has no problem with any of this … it is our limited self-concept that does …

solution? easy. identify with the whole…

inescapable and unavoidable, by the way … not if, but when

Posted by: gregorylent at July 26, 2010 2:56 AM | Permalink

From Alexis Madrigal, senior editor and lead technology writer for TheAtlantic.com:

The rogue, rather mysterious website provided the raw data; the newspapers provided the context, corroboration, analysis, and distribution. ‘Wikileaks was not involved in the news organizations’ research, reporting, analysis and writing,’ Times editors said in an online note. ‘The Times spent about a month mining the data for disclosures and patterns, verifying and cross-checking with other information sources, and preparing the articles that are published today.

The New York Times’ David Carr may have nailed the issue when he tweeted that it was the “asymmetries” that Wikileaks introduces into the equation that have the government spooked. An administration official told Politico, ‘[I]t’s worth noting that Wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan.’ But the truth is that we don’t really know what Wikileaks is, or what the organization’s ethics are, or why they’ve become such a stunningly good conduit of classified information.

In the new asymmetrical journalism, it’s not clear who is on what side or what the rules of engagement actually are. But the reason Wikileaks may have just changed the media is that we found out that it doesn’t really matter. Their data is good, and that’s what counts.

From Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world. Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret. But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively: it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing. WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall, enabling modest glimpses into what The Washington Post spent last week describing as Top Secret America. The war on WikiLeaks — which was already in full swing, including, strangely, from some who claim a commitment to transparency — will only intensify now. Anyone who believes that the Government abuses its secrecy powers in order to keep the citizenry in the dark and manipulate public opinion — and who, at this point, doesn’t believe that? – should be squarely on the side of the greater transparency which Wikileaks and its sources, sometimes single-handedly, are providing.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40251.html#ixzz0utLuIynG

And finally, for those who claim this is “old news” and “no big deal,” ponder this from Politico:

Whether WikiLeaks uncovered anything new isn’t actually important — it’s on the front page of every newspaper in the country; the media is now focused on Afghanistan, and that makes it a big deal,” said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on India and Pakistan.

The public is now more skeptical about the administration’s strategy in Afghanistan than they were last week, and that makes it real, said Markey, who was a South Asia analyst during the Bush administration.

Technorati Tags: Wikileaks, Afghan War Diary 2004 – 2010, Julian Assange, Alexis Madrigal, Glenn Greenwald, Jay Rosen

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Guest Post: Health Care Reform Will Help Everybody

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:07:21 -0400

Hey there, frumps. It’s been a while since Health Care Reform has been mentioned here on the Frump Gazette meanwhile those on both sides of the previous debate wait to see whether the Health Care Reforms enacted will have a net positive or negative effect on American healthcare delivery in years to come. Today’s posting comes from Barbara O’Brien who speaks to some of the subtleties of reform that are alreadyhaving an impact on our ailing health care system. Barbara blogs at The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, AlterNet, and elsewhere on the progressive political and health blogophere, has been chosen to be a panelist at the Yearly Kos Convention and a featured guest blogger at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC.

Many Americans assume the new health care reform act will benefit mostly the poor and uninsured and hurt everyone else, according to polls. As Matt Yglesias wrote, “Basically, people see this as a bill that will take resources from people who have health insurance and give it to people who don’t have health insurance.” Those who still oppose the reform say that people ought to pay for their own health care.

We all believe in the virtues of hard work and self-reliance, but these days it’s a fantasy to think that anyone but the mega-wealthy will not, sooner or later, depend on help from others to pay medical bills. And that’s true no matter how hard you work, how much you love America, or how diligently you take care of yourself. The cost of medical care has so skyrocketed that breaking an arm or leg could cost as much as a new car. And if you get cancer or heart disease — which can happen even to people who live healthy lifestyles — forget about it. The disease will not only clean you out; it will leave a whopping debt for your survivors to pay.

And the truth is, we all pay for other peoples’ health care whether we know it or not. When people can’t pay their medical bills, the cost of their health care gets added to everyone else’s bills and insurance premiums. When poor people use emergency rooms as a doctor of last resort, their care is not “free.” You pay for it.

Another common fantasy about medical care is that the “free market” provides incentives for medical companies to develop innovative new drugs and treatments for disease without government subsidy. It’s true that private enterprise is very good at developing profitable health care products. But not all medical care can be made profitable.

For years, the U.S. government has been funding medical research that the big private companies don’t want to do because there is too much cost for the potential profit. This is especially true for diseases that are rare and expensive to treat. An example of a recent advance made possible by government grants include new guidelines for malignant pleural mesothelioma treatment developed by MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers. Another is a blood screening test developed by mesothelioma doctors like thoracic surgeon Dr. David Sugarbaker. The health reform act provides for more dollars for such research, from which even many of the tea party protesters will benefit.

The biggest fantasy of all was that people who had insurance didn’t have to worry about health care costs. But the fact is that in recent years millions of Americans have been bankrupted by medical costs, and three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance. And yes, insurance companies even dumped hard-working, law-abiding patriots. But the health care reform act will put an end to that, and now America’s hard-working, law-abiding patriots are more financially secure, whether they like it or not.

Technorati Tags: Health Care Reform, mesothelioma, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dr. David Sugarbaker, Barbara O’Brien

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Triple Gainor into the Shallow End

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:07:16 -0400

If you don’t quite recognize the smug little pug in the photo here, don’t feel bad – he’s nobody important and I promise you can go right back to ignoring him as soon as you’re finished reading this post. He’s Dan Gainor, a staffer at the Media Research Center (MRC), and just another member of Brent Bozell’s Cabal of Conservative Wrath. Gainor holds the totally awesome title of MRC Vice President of Business & Culture and The T. Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow. As if that isn’t impressive enough, Gainor has racked up kudos from Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich and makes frequent appearances (as an expert witness) on Fox News, the last bastion of fair and balanced news coverage – in the WORLD!

In other words, Gainor is a mainstay on the front lines of the battle against the diabolical lefty-liberal media bias and a modern-day Sir Lancelot of principled, ethical journalism. Gainor’s usual strategy in this noble struggle appears to be a “fight fire with fire” and to root out liberal media bias and plant conservative media bias in its place. Like so many of his colleagues, Gainor fails to see the hypocrisy in this approach and goes on his merry way fairly unnoticed save by those who share his stunted views.

Today, however, Gainor is enjoying his “fifteen minutes of fame” because, yesterday he indulged his inner passive-aggressive child and tweeted this offer (complete with misspelling):

As The Church Lady would say: “Isn’t that special?”

The occasion that so enraged Dan Gainor was Grayson’s speech, in Congress, prior to the vote on the emergency extension of unemployment benefits. Grayson aptly anticipated a GOP united attempt to deny passage and ended his speech with the words “May God have mercy on your souls” if they did that. Grayson’s emotional indictment of obstructive Republicans obviously rubbed Gainor the wrong way; evidently the GOP is feeling a little proprietary about political grandstanding these days, since it has become their sole contribution to the legislative process.

When a fellow journalist twittered anxiously over the notion of publicly soliciting violence, Gainor backed off just a smidge, said it was all in jest, but still allowed that if it happened he’d “love to see a video of it.”

Ah, that classic and classy conservative sense of humor . . .

For his part, Rep. Grayson (who is twice the man that Gainor is – in size and other things that matter) brushed the silly little weenie aside with a reminder that “I hit back.” Put that in your video, Gainor. Ah, but then, I’m forgetting, this is an arch-conservative – he doesn’t do his own intimidation, he pays someone else to do his dirty work. He doesn’t get up in Congressional representatives or fellow journalist’s faces when he doesn’t like how they conduct themselves, he writes smarmy, whiny little rants from the safety of Fort Conservative on the Potomac.

In a recent lamentation about journalism going to hell in a handbasket, Gainor offered this little gem in a Congressional hearing:

“The Society of Professional Journalists, to which I belong, has a detailed Code of Ethics. At its heart, it says journalists should provide “a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” They do neither. It’s fitting, then, in a hearing to discuss the “diversity of voices,” that everyone here grasp a key point. Diversity of voices in print isn’t about news, it’s fiction.”

Fair enough. Here’s a random samling of Gainor’s recent contributions to the world of professional journalism . . . you be the judge:

In the lead-up to the recent World Cup, Gainor offered this tidbit about the politics of soccer:

“Soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport, the left is pushing [soccer] in schools across the country.”

Gainor must have impressed himself with that stupefying insight because he pulled it out of his bag tricks while visiting his conserva-buddy, G. Gordon Liddy on his radio program (June 10, 2010), and added further insight, while he was on a roll:

“the problem here is, soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport” and that “the left is pushing it in schools across the country.” He added: “generally football games in this country don’t devolve into riots or wars.” He later added that the sport of soccer “is being sold” as necessary due to the “browning of America.”

Here’s a little report from Media Matters on Gainor’s crusade against Dave Weigel:

“From Politico, in an article about David Weigel’s resignation from the WashPost, where he wrote about the conservative movement [emphasis added]:”

“Starting last month, Dan Gainor, vice president for business and culture at the Media Research Center, the conservative media watchdog group, went on something of a crusade.”

“Angered by a joke that David Weigel made about Matt Drudge on his Twitter feed, Gainor contacted conservative groups asking them to stop cooperating with Weigel, who had recently taken his blog about the conservative movement to the Washington Post.”

“We encouraged conservatives not to deal with him,” he said. “We contacted other conservative organizations and said, ‘This guy is no friend of the conservative movement. We recommend that you deny him access.’ Some did.”

“Got that? A right-wing group that ostensibly monitors the media, contacted like-minded, right-wing organizations and urged them not to cooperate with a Washington Post reporter because the reporter was, supposedly, not a “friend” of the conservative movement.”

Gainor’s permanent snit about the unworthiness of Barack Obama to have taken up in the Oval Office, along with his mandatory adoration of Ronald Reagan, of course leads Gainor to compare Obama unfavorably with the Gipper; unfortunately, Gainor doesn’t have enough of a grip on the history required to do that very well. Gainor offered an assessment of Obama’s first year in office, which, of course, featured poor Obama falling deplorably short. At least that’s the point Gainor attempted to make — for the record, Gainor fumbled:

According to Gainor, when Obama increased defense spending in his first year it was somehow the exact opposite of Reagan’s first year increase in defense spending. Likewise, Obama’s stated goal of a “world without nuclear weapons”, and proposals to bilaterally reduce our nuclear weapons arsenal by 30 percent is somehow totally different from Reagan’s “ultimate goal” of “eliminating all nuclear weapons.”

As Christine Schwen of Media Matters put it:

“So, Gainor claimed that “Barack Obama’s no Reagan,” but it’s pretty clear that Gainor’s Reagan was no Reagan either.”

“Sarah Palin would be proud.”

When the Right invented the ACORN crisis, Gainor was beside himself that only Fox News had the courage and journalistic integrity to cover the story the way that it should be covered (24/7 with screaming headlines and lots of tsk-ing and finger-wagging). Like a voice crying in the wilderness came Gainor’s lament that the story had everything the media could possibly want in a blockbuster story (really, he thought that) “and yet no one, NO ONE, I say” in the lamestream LIBERAL media is covering it. This, of course, is proof that the liberal media are protecting Obama.

Except, as usual, Gainor was looking at the thing through elephant-colored glasses. According to Nexis/Lexis, these were mainstream media outlets that, prior to the publication of Gainor’s piece, had covered the ACORN story out of Baltimore. They were: Baltimore Sun, New York Post, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Grand Rapids Press, Kansas City Star, Newsday, Newark Star-Ledger, Washington Post, Washington Times, CNN.com, Washingtonpost.com.

Yup, those lousy lefties buried the story rather than tell the truth . . .

With that hole plugged, Gainor took on network TV and accused them of the same media bias because, I guess, the networks didn’t suspend normal programming to provide 24/7 coverage of ACORN.

* * *

So, that, in a nutshell, is the pathetic little puke that would like to pay one of the big kids to punch Alan Grayson’s lights out. Now you can go back to ignoring him . . .

DISCLOSURE: I am a totally unscrupulous old fart of a blogger with no ‘ethical journalist’ constraints and a liberal mean streak. I am also sick to death of the whining and social pathologies of the far Right. So sue me . . .

P.S. I’ll give a free 3-day pass to Dollywood to the first Republican who eats Dan Gainor’s lunch.

Technorati Tags: Dan Gainor, Rep. Alan Grayson, Media Research Center, Brent Bozell, G. Gordon Liddy

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Refudiate This, Oxymoron!

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:07:48 -0400

I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself,
And falls on th’other. . . .

Macbeth Act 1, scene 7. 25–28

Hail to the Chief

If Sarah Palin and her “political machine” ever hope to see the business end of a run for POTUS, they’d all better stop thinking of this job as a nine-to-fiver. It’s going to take world class political handlers, policy wonks and spinmeisters, on a 24/7, basis to ever render this spectacularly silly woman even remotely ready for prime time – in our lifetime, let alone by 2012.

I don’t enjoy reading (or writing) ad hominem attacks on public figures. That said, if Sarah Palin was just another ditzy ex-beauty queen, with delusions of grandeur, making an embarrassing spectacle of herself on the national stage, it would be one thing. But, against all odds (and conventional wisdom), the woman is gathering serious momentum on her hell-bent, careening runaway train bound for glory and thereby merits some serious observation.

Example: on Sunday, La Palin, flying solo on the Twitter Machine, managed to expose her Islamaphobic dark side, her substandard facility with her native tongue, and a troubling lack of clarity and decisiveness — all while claiming parity with William Shakespeare – in the space of a couple of tweets.

The subject that had La Palin all-atwitter was the Right’s most recent obsession – the Mosque at Ground Zero.

It goes without saying, of course, that the “Mosque at Ground Zero” is neither a mosque nor is it to be located at “Ground Zero.” It is a Muslim community center (along the lines of a YMCA) that will include a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, restaurant, and bookstore as well as a prayer room that might technically be considered a “mosque” room. The site for this community center is two (city) blocks away from Ground Zero in an unassuming fifteen story building. No one is planning to build the world’s tallest minaret on the ruins of the World Trade Center.

As Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs mused:

“Suppose the community center was five blocks away instead of two blocks away.”

“Would that be OK?”

“How about if it was in midtown?”

“Far enough?”

“Maybe it needs to be in Queens?”

Without further ado, here are La Palin’s ruminations and refinements on the the Mosque at Ground Zero.

First Tweet:

“Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate”

Lucky for Sarah, she appears to have a few “guardian angels” keeping watch over her Twittery to tip her off when she tweets something stupid, because yesterday’s tweeting required a couple of do-overs before it was fit for the “campaign trail.” Lucky for the rest of us, we have a few “guardian angels” who like to save the essence and evolution of such cultural artifacts for posterity.

Revision #1: in which the author excises the imaginary word “refudiate” replacing it with an actual, albeit improperly used, word “refute.” And while she’s at it with the red pen, “Peaceful Muslims” morphs into “Peaceful New Yorkers,” to wit:

“Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real”

Far be it from me to plumb the depths of Palin Profundity, however these changes do raise questions like:

Could “refudiate” have resulted from an unfortunate typo on Palin’s teeny, tiny blackberry keyboard?

Probably not; it’s not like “f” and “p” are close to each other – even on a phone. Besides, as Charles Johnson pointed out, Palin recently used “refudiate” on a Fox News program; moreover, the use of this signature coinage also serves, as Johnson points out, to prove that these tweets were almost certainly composed by an “off-leash” Palin rather than some political flunky assigned to handle Palin’s Twittery.

The thornier issue is actually Palin’s dropping of the incendiary “peaceful Muslims” tag in favor of the more inclusive “peaceful New Yorkers.” Perhaps Palin’s new gal-pal, Pamela Geller persuaded her that “peaceful Muslim” was an oxymoron? Geller, who can be counted on to laud Islamaphobia wherever she finds it, was quick with the kudos for Palin’s standing up for the Ban the Mosque mob.

Geller tweeted the following:

“Sarah Palin Opposes Ground Zero Mega Mosque: Gd, I love this woman! She is not afraid of the jackals, hyenas, a..”

Also, I’m sure that it did not escape Geller’s attention, back in April, when Palin was one of the few who voiced a defense of evangelist Franklin Graham after he was uninvited to chair a major Pentagon event in May, in light of his inflammatory remarks against Islam.

On that occasion, Palin wrote on her Facebook page:

“It’s truly a sad day when such a fine patriotic man, whose son is serving on his fourth deployment in Afghanistan to protect our freedom of speech and religion, is dis-invited from speaking at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer service.

What this “fine patriotic man” had to say about Islam was:

“We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion.”

That’s fairly straightforward . . . no quibbling over who’s a peaceful Muslim and who isn’t.

* * *

I suspect that, whatever thinly-veiled, paranoiac, low opinion Sarah Palin might have of Muslims (peaceful or otherwise), “New Yorkers” are probably a close second. After all, Manhattan pols and pundits have, over time, offered some of the sharpest criticisms of Palin’s most heartlandish notions. Nevertheless, she alleges to know a lot about New Yorkers “too raw, too real pain” and what should and shouldn’t be done about it.

Predictably, New York did not take Palin’s exhortations sitting down; in fact, a policy aide from New York Mayor Bloomberg’s office strafed Palin and Geller’s meeting of the minds, in the shallow end, with these tweets:

“@SarahPalinUSA mind your business”

Followed up with this:

“@SarahPalinUSA whose hearts? Racist hearts?”

In short order, the aide’s survival instincts kicked in and she deleted both tweets (more’s the pity).

Later, last evening, the same aide added the following tweets, as explanation:

“Deleted post bc I regretted curt response. But fact is, I believe this city belongs to everyone – and no one more than another”

“Unlike @SarahPalinUSA, I was born here grew up here. Was showing off to a visitor today – look at how beautiful and diverse my city is.”

“I felt pain of 9/11, the trauma. I got through it by believing in my city. Not through fear and hate.”

At least Sarah can’t complain about the do-over . . .

Once Palin got the high-five from Geller, she was back to the appeal to the “peaceful Muslims” with her closing gambit:

“Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing”

Aside from Palin’s breathtakingly patronizing insinuation that Muslims have to asked to be understanding of the human emotion of feeling stabbed in the heart, there is that odd UNNECESSARY provocation line. If I venture to paraphrase, all that I can come up with is that Palin believes that a) Muslims have quite enough mosques already, thank you very much and that b) Americans find the building of mosques by American Muslims, on the American land that they purchase for that purpose, somehow provocative.

If that’s the case, I would like to point out to Ms. Palin that individual Americans could just as easily find the building of a synagogue, an A.M.E. church, a Mormon tabernacle, a Shinto temple (or a Dominionist Megachurch, for that matter) an “UNNECESSARY provocation;” but because we are Americans, those individuals will have to learn to live with their “provoked” feelings because that’s who we are – we all agreed, a long time ago, that any American citizen can build, attend or support any church that s/he is inclined to.

Ironically, it goes without saying, of course, that the “Mosque at Ground Zero” is neither a mosque nor is it to be located at “Ground Zero.” It is a Muslim community center (along the lines of a YMCA) that will include a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, restaurant, and bookstore as well as a prayer room that might technically be considered a “mosque” room. The site for this community center is two (city) blocks away from Ground Zero in an unassuming fifteen story building. No one is planning to build the world’s tallest minaret on the ruins of the World Trade Center. As Charles Johnson mused:

“Suppose the community center was five blocks away instead of two blocks away.”

“Would that be OK?”

“How about if it was in midtown?”

“Far enough?”

“Maybe it needs to be in Queens?”

* * *

To some, this may seem to be merely a semantic tempest in a teapot but, as long as this ridiculous woman appeals to a dismayingly growing cross-section of disenchanted Americans, we have a problem that we can’t afford to ignore. It is a symptom of just how stressed and dysfunctional American society is, right now, that the notion of Sarah Palin in the White House is anything more than a cartoon nightmare. A Palin presidency would put the last nail in the coffin of American credibility, worldwide, and would represent a dangerous step toward a theocratic totalitarianism where yesterday’s tweets become tomorrow’s policy (among other, equally frightening possibilities).

Surely this is not the last of Sarahbelle’s Twittermania; she obviously finds Facebook and Twitter totally awesome because their “hit and run” format allows one that precious freedom of speech without having to get bogged down in annoying explanations and/or defenses of what is said – perfect for the attention- or fact-challenged politico. As a commenter on Huffington Post this morning incisively pointed out: “Giving Sarah Palin a Twitter account is like giving a monkey a machine gun.” That says it quite nicely, IMO.

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin, Pamela Geller, Mosque at Ground Zero, Mayor Bloomberg, refudiate

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