Jefferson, that commie rat

By Patrice Greanville, TGP

The Founding Fathers: a communist cabal? How would Jefferson be handled these days by the establishment’s commentariat?
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(1)

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No wonder the American Declaration of Independence influenced so many in Europe itself, where its core ideas had germinated, and later served as a blueprint for the French Revolution and other revolutions in the centuries that followed. They say Ho Chi Minh was inspired (and moved) by the document, and I believe it. For truer words have rarely been said in a more beautiful or compelling manner.

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⁽¹⁾ Excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

aka The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

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Susan G. Komen and the Planned Parenthood Jihad

Charles P. Pierce (The Politics Blog, Esquire)
With select comments

[And don’t miss our addendum with a special opinion by Alexandra Le Tellier]

It is very possible that the women in this country who want to control their reproductive systems, to say nothing of their lives, are going to get fed up very soon with having their freedom to do just that get mucked with by Bible-banging pests, meddling congresscritters, gutless foundations, and the members of the Clan of the Red Beanie. I do not know what vengeance they will undertake, but I suspect it will be fierce.

The latest entrant in the parade of chickens is the Susan G. Komen For The Cure, the country’s leading charity dealing with breast cancer, and the organization behind all those pink ribbons you see everywhere, and a group formidable enough to get NFL players wearing pink shoes once a season. A group, then, with some considerable muscle. Which it, sadly, has declined to use on behalf of Planned Parenthood. Instead, it has pulled its funding from PP, spewing a considerable amount of bureaucratic ink to cover its cowardly retreat:

“While it is regrettable when changes in priorities and policies affect any of our grantees, such as a long-standing partner like Planned Parenthood, we must continue to evolve to best meet the needs of the women we serve and most fully advance our mission.”

Please tell me specifically how the Komen group has “evolved” in such a way that contributing money to Planned Parenthood no longer can “best meet the needs of the women” it serves, and how it no longer helps the Komen group “fully advance [its] mission.” I’m dying to know. I need a good laugh.

Of course, the real reason is a politically motivated audit undertaken as part of a general jihad against Planned Parenthood undertaken by Florida congresscritter Cliff Stearns, the chairman of an oversight subcommittee and a real freaking prize in his own right. Stearns is the guy who added to the Zadroga bill, which provided for federal relief to the first responders who worked on the pile at Ground Zero in New York, the ludicrous requirement that the names of all applicants for such relief first be checked against all terrorist watch-list. He also once attacked PBS because the South African version of Sesame Street introduced a character who was HIV-positive. Like I said, a real prize. Nevertheless, he was enough to scare off the Komen group. It also seems that the Komen group’s decision may have been influenced by a woman named Karen Handel, a wingnut anti-choicer who once ran for governor of Georgia, and who is now the group’s vice-president for public policy. I would almost guarantee that Handel’s hiring was one of those half-assed “common ground” initiatives popular among liberals, and among Democrats, who are tired of all the yelling about abortion and who believe, quite seriously, like children believe in the Easter Bunny, that there are reasonable people in the anti-choice community with whom they can (and should) deal.

This, of course, is all my arse. The anti-choice people want the power to reassert control over what the ladies do with their lady parts, because that is the way Jesus and their daddies intended it to be. Legally, it’s not about Roe. It’s about Griswold. It will not stop with abortion. It will not even stop with birth control. Good god, would you want your reproductive life to be circumscribed by the likes of Cliff Fking Stearns? The only common ground worth having is the common ground worth fighting for. This is not the way to do it.

ADDENDUM

Komen controversy: The pink ribbon’s ugly new image

By Alexandra Le Tellier / Opinions & Provocations, LA Times

In one swift move, the Susan G. Komen For The Cure foundation has undermined its pro-woman, pro-health, pro-solidarity image.

By pulling funding from Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings — not to mention after Republican activist and abortion rights opponent Karen Handelcame on board as vice president of public policy — and couching the decision as new protocol, Komen’s turned into an org women won’t want to be associated with. Not all women, of course. But there will be a lot us who’ll not longer be able to look at the pink ribbon as simply “breast cancer awareness.” They’ll think: What self-respecting, abortion rights supporter who cares about women’s rights and women’s health would be caught wearing a pink ribbon now, much less buying any of the many products that display the pink insignia? With one decision, Komen turned the pink ribbon into an ugly and polarizing symbol.

Opinionators and senators are also lamenting Komen’s move. Here’s a roundup chronicling some of the critique.

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times writes: “[Komen] have not only made it harder for women to have abortions, but also to get birth control counseling, prenatal care, and now cancer screenings.”

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones writes: “The right’s recent jihad against Planned Parenthood is about as loathsome as anything I’ve ever seen come out of them. They simply don’t care anymore how many people they hurt or how much harm they do to anyone they disapprove of.”

Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezabel writes: “Komen’s brand is imploding and seriously alienating young women and politically progressive supporters who were drawn to the cause expressly because of their non-political approach to a non-political disease. But when a charity hires a woman like Handel, a woman who must always attach politics to a woman’s body, and allows her to project her political beliefs into her work, Komen ceases being a viable charity and starts being a self-righteous political organization for rich ladies who like hanging around with celebrities. It’s a social club, and the only thing it’s curing right now is people’s desire to raise any more money for them.”

Megan McArdle at the Atlantic writes: “In that environment, you can see why an organization that does not itself have a mission to support abortion access would want to pull back from funding Planned Parenthood, even for related services. Unfortunately, while they easily could have declined to fund PP without much backlash, de-funding them sends an extremely explicit message that is probably going to cost them significant public support. Which is a pity, because early detection and treatment of breast cancer is a mission that we should all be able to agree on.”

Senators Lautenberg, Murray, Mikulski, Boxer, Cantwell, Gillibrand, Menendez, Wyden, Blumenthal, Shaheen, Begich, Merkley, Tester, Akaka, Sanders, (Sherrod) Brown, Leahy, Baucus, Cardin, Feinstein, Franken, and Kerry write in a letter re-posted on the Washington Post:

More than 90 percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are primary and preventative including wellness exams and cancers screenings that save lives. Each year, Planned Parenthood health clinics provide 750,000 breast exams, 770,000 pap tests and nearly 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases. Twenty percent of all women in the U.S. have visited a Planned Parenthood health center….

Komen funding for Planned Parenthood has provided nearly 170,000 clinical breast exams and resulted in 6,400 referrals for mammograms. In 2011 alone, grants from Komen provided Planned Parenthood with roughly $650,000 in funding for breast cancer prevention, screening, and education. According to a recent statement by Komen, “In some areas of the U.S., our affiliates have determined a Planned Parenthood clinic to be the best or only local place where women can receive breast health care.”

It would be tragic if any woman — let alone thousands of women — lost access to these potentially life-saving screenings because of a politically motivated attack.

Hear, hear.

–Alexandra Le Tellier

Photos: A breast cancer awareness ribbon. Credit: Los Angeles Times

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Newt Gingrich: King Cracker

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford, with select comments

It is no longer unthinkable that Barack Obama could face Newt Gingrich in November. If that happens, the political lines will be unequivocally drawn around race – and only race. But Black people will have no defender. “The issue in a contest between Obama and Gingrich will be the same as between Gingrich and Juan Williams, a slimy Black right-winger who claims African Americans wallow in a culture of ‘victimhood.’” Sound familiar? Maybe that’s because “the coded language and euphemisms of white supremacy are deployed by both Republicans and Democrats, and forms the core of American political speech.”

For “cracker” references, read the story.

“Gingrich is drawing a racial line in the sand, just as the segregated Atlanta Crackers baseball team did on their playing field.”

It now seems possible that the presidential election could wind up being a contest between the quintessential corporate Democrat, Barack Obama, and Newt Gingrich, King of the Crackers.

Now, before any radio station considers pulling this commentary from their airwaves as some kind of hate speech, let me inform the listeners that “cracker” was a label proudly worn by masses of white folks, and especially popular in Gingrich’s state of Georgia. From 1901 until 1965, the Atlanta Crackers [6] was one of professional baseball’s most successful minor league teams. These Crackers played out of Atlanta’s Ponce de Leon field until the Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee, in 1966.

Newt Gingrich knows all about Georgia Crackers. The Atlanta Crackers baseball team was still going strong when Gingrich went to high school in Columbus, Georgia, and they played their last game the year he graduated from Emory University, in Atlanta. It was very popular to be a “cracker” in Georgia in those days…and, apparently, it still is, throughout the South, including South Carolina, where Gingrich won the Republican presidential primary.

The former House speaker from Cobb County, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, won a standing ovation when he rejected reporter Juan Williams’ suggestion that Gingrich was purposely insulting Black people [7] with his rhetoric on food stamps and his urging that African American children be put to work as janitors in public schools. That’s the kind of talk that makes unreconstructed Georgia crackers and their soul mates everywhere proud. Gingrich is drawing a racial line in the sand, just as the segregated Atlanta Crackers baseball team did on their playing field. And, it is serving him well in the Deep South Republican Party, which began its transition to the White Man’s Party with Barry Goldwater’s presidential run in 1964, followed by Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” in 1968.

“Gingrich’s verbal weapons are simply sharper than most, but President Obama deploys a milder version of anti-Black rhetoric.”

The problem that Gingrich presents is not so much that he pollutes the public conversation with raw rhetorical racism. The coded language and euphemisms of white supremacy are deployed by both Republicans and Democrats, and forms the core of American political speech. Mass Black incarceration, mass Black unemployment, and de facto housing segregation are the domain of both major parties. Gingrich’s verbal weapons are simply sharper than most, but President Obama deploys a milder version of anti-Black rhetoric, sometimes even on Fathers Day [8].

Except for those of us who know that building a movement is much more important than voting for evil.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [9].

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120125_gf_Crackers.mp3

[10]

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/newt-gingrich-king-cracker

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The Imperative of the Republicans’ Rightward Imperative

By Steven Jonas, Senior Editor, Dr. J.’s BF Commentary No. 191

(Author’s Note: This is a slightly longer version of the Commentary published on BuzzFlash.)

A Republican candidate for his party’s nomination known as “moderate” would abolish Medicare as we know it, adopting something very similar to the infamous Paul Ryan plan (which happened to sink any presidential aspirations Ryan himself might have had) (1). In boasting about it, he said: “I’ll end Medicare faster than Newt Gingrich.” He also supported the proposed Mississippi Constitutional amendment to ensconce a particular religious belief as to when live begins in it (turned by the voters of Mississippi!) Yes, that’s Mitt, who continues to have all sorts of trouble cozying up to the Republican Far Right, because of that awful label “moderate” earned when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Then there’s the “traditional conservative” Rick Santorum who said: “As long as abortion is legal in this country . . . we will never rest because that law does not comport with God’s law” (2).

References:

1. The Progress Report, Dec. 9, 2011: “Romney Bearhugs Disastrous Plan to End Medicare.”

2. Bacon, Jr., P. (The Washington Post), “Courting Christians,” Newsday, Dec. 5, 2011.

3. Jonas, S., “The Triumph of Cheneyism,” http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13119 .

4. Pollitt, Katha, “Ron Paul’s Strange Bedfellows,” The Nation (online), January 4, 2012.

5. Westminster, J., The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022, Port Jefferson, NY: The Thomas Jefferson Press, 1996, Chap. 1, “The United States in 1994: Setting the Stage for Fascism.” (Available at TPJ Magazine.net, “The 15%” Archive.)

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of over 30 books. In addition to being a Columnist for Truthout/BuzzFlash (http://www.truth-out.org/, http://www.buzzflash.com), he is a Contributing Editor for The Greanville Post (https://www.greanvillepost.com/; Managing Editor and a Contributing Author for TPJmagazine; a Contributor to The Planetary Movement, , a Featured Writer for Dandelion Salad, a Contributor to Op-Ed News.com (http://www.opednews.com/), and a Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter.

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For God So Loved the 1 Percent …

By KEVIN M. KRUSE

Princeton, N.J.

In recent weeks Mitt Romney has become the poster child for unchecked capitalism, a role he seems to embrace with relish. Concerns about economic equality, he told Matt Lauer of NBC, were really about class warfare.

“When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent,” he said, “you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”

Mr. Romney was on to something, though perhaps not what he intended.

The concept of “one nation under God” has a noble lineage, originating in Abraham Lincoln’s hope at Gettysburg that “this nation, under God, shall not perish from the earth.” After Lincoln, however, the phrase disappeared from political discourse for decades. But it re-emerged in the mid-20th century, under a much different guise: corporate leaders and conservative clergymen deployed it to discredit Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

During the Great Depression, the prestige of big business sank along with stock prices. Corporate leaders worked frantically to restore their public image and simultaneously roll back the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state. Notably, the American Liberty League, financed by corporations like DuPont and General Motors, made an aggressive case for capitalism. Most, however, dismissed its efforts as self-interested propaganda. (A Democratic Party official joked that the organization should have been called “the American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a DuPont product and, second, you can see right through it.”)

presidential prayer breakfast on a “government under God” theme and worked to promote public religiosity in a variety of ways. In 1954, as this “under-God consciousness” swept the nation, Congress formally added the phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance.

In the end, Mr. Romney is correct to claim that complaints about economic inequality are inconsistent with the concept of “one nation under God.” But that’s only because the “1 percent” of an earlier era intended it that way.

Kevin M. Kruse, an associate professor of history at Princeton, is the author of the forthcoming “One Nation Under God: Corporations, Christianity, and the Rise of the Religious Right.”

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