Posted March 16th, 2010 by Wayne Besen

(Weekly Column)

Last week, the Texas Board of Education voted 10-5, along party lines, to replace history textbooks with right wing political propaganda. The vote followed a separate, contentious scrum over whether creationism should be taught in science courses.

Would it not have been easier to have simply jettisoned all textbooks and replaced them with episodes of Glenn Beck and Pat Robertson’s 700 Club on a continuous loop during school hours?

In defending his bid to jam creationism into the school science curriculum and rewrite history, ultra-conservative board member, Dr. Don McLeroy, said, “Somebody’s gotta stand up to experts.”

One wonders if he has the same negative view on experts when it comes to his own dental profession?  Would McLeroy trust his own expertise over a guy off the street that fancied himself a dentist because he owned a pair of rusty pliers?

Of course, many fundamentalists have long disdained experts, such as historians, because they have a tendency to reveal men like McLeroy to be agenda-driven amateurs. The extremism of the Texas School Board is evident by the guidelines they voted for.

For example, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, the Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly and the National Rifle Association have replaced Thomas Jefferson. This is in a despicable effort to marginalize the man who coined the phrase, “separation of church and state”, while elevating America as a right wing “Christian Nation.” (Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein were also eliminated to make room for these conservatives)

Newt Gingrich’s flash-in-the-pan Contract with America and Rev. Jerry Falwell’s short-lived Moral Majority are elevated as historically important, while the supposed religious roots of the American Revolution will be now be studied.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” David Bradley, a conservative school board member from Beaumont, told The New York Times.

Social conservatives have created an entire industry to twist our nation’s history. But, if the founders were fundamentalists who intended America to be a Christian version of Iran, than why do these folks have to work so hard to prove their point?

It seems to me that our founders were quite eloquent and certainly able to convey their desire to be a fundamentalist nation, if that is what they had intended. But, our country is not called “God Land.” Jesus’ name is not in the United States Constitution.

Case closed.

These simple facts are clearly eating up these zealots inside and driving them to distraction. They just do not want to accept that their totalitarian and exclusionary vision of America is a radical and dangerous departure from the ideas of religious freedom embraced by our Founding Fathers.

These bitter fundamentalists are left cobbling together arcane quotes – often out of context – that make a circumstantial case that some of our nation’s founders were religious.

So what?

There are millions of Americans who go to church each week, but they don’t want to live in an oppressive theocracy that brainwashes students and undermines democracy. At heart, the conservative members of the board believe they are superior and anyone who does not imbibe on their delusion can be minimized or erased from the historical record.

Furthermore, the new textbook “standards” are not about learning, but a laundry list of southern fundamentalist cultural grievances. For instance, the civil rights movement is downgraded and the peaceful Martin Luther King Jr. will now be “balanced” by lessons on the Black Panthers.

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society will be degraded for “the unintended consequences” such as affirmative action. The Board rejected attempts to increase the number of Latino figures in history lessons and demands that Republicans get more credit for voting in favor of civil rights legislation.  So, even as they demean minorities, the Board is conservatively correct enough to portray social conservatives as supporters of the Civil Rights movement. Nice touch.

There was also approval for an amendment highlighting that Italians and Germans, not just Japanese, were placed in US camps during World War II, to dispute the idea that imprisoning the Japanese was motivated by racism.

The bloc of seven fundamentalists on the Texas Board of Education doesn’t really care about public education. In fact, several members either home school their children or send them to private schools. Their real goal is to infiltrate the system to remake it in their image. There are three things that I hope will come from this controversy:

1) Enough people come forward during the 30 day comment period to reverse the vote.

2) Mainstream textbook makers will take a moral stand and refuse to print propaganda

3) If the standards remain, schools that are able should switch to computer software for lessons, so they are not saddled with Bible-based “history” books for a decade

Is there any doubt that brutally unflattering chapters about these zealous hijackers of history will be written into future social studies textbooks?

Posted March 2nd, 2010 by Wayne Besen

Ryan PicnicPoor Ryan Sorba.

It is clear that he is about to humiliate himself with his upcoming book, “The Gay Gene Hoax”.  Although I have not read much of his polemic, what I have so far seen is as insufferable as it is inaccurate.

Sorba is a dilettante who has no understanding of the topic matter and essentially  footnotes bad information hoping his audience is too uneducated to notice.

His book is also a poorly orchestrated hit job on activists, such as myself, who have shown the notion of “ex-gay” to be a myth.

For example, on page 77 of his sophistic screed Sorba writes, “In all likelihood, the man (Wayne Besen)is a calculating and manipulative liar.” (Needless to say, the unbalanced minds at Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) chortled over this attack.)

Interestingly, a few pages later (89) the presumably honest and forthright Sorba quotes the debunked 1979 Masters & Johnson book, “Homosexuality in Perspective” to support his flimsy arguments.

It seems that Sorba is shockingly unaware that the book he quotes was disavowed last year Maier-Mastersby Virginia Johnson in Thomas Maier’s groundbreaking book Masters of Sex.

Indeed, the results were said to have been entirely fabricated.

Virginia Johnson actually argued in 1978 that “Homosexuality in Perspective” should never have seen the light of day – but it was already too late in the publishing process to undo the damage.

For someone who fancies himself an expert, it is incredible that Sorba was not informed on this major development, considering articles were published on Maier’s book in major newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Maybe Sorba was so busy watching FOX News and reading The Washington Times that he missed the widely publicized information. To help bring him up to speed, here is an excerpt from the Washington Post:

He (William Masters) was also the driving force behind the team’s controversial embrace of conversion therapy for gays. In “Homosexuality in Perspective” (1979), he and Johnson claimed they could straighten out gay men or women in a matter of weeks, with a “failure rate” of only one-third. Buttressed with phony case studies, the book’s findings were quickly denounced by the medical establishment and seized upon just as quickly by the religious right as evidence that gay lifestyles were a choice, not an orientation.

So Masters and Johnson bear some of the blame for the “ex-gay” ministries that currently litter our cultural landscape…

The very foundation that Sorba uses to back his case is a house of cards that had already fallen. Clearly, Sorba is profoundly ignorant of his subject matter, irredeemably truth challenged or so contemptuous of his conservative readers that he believes they will take his erroneous words at face value.

I found this glaring error in about five minutes of research. I can only imagine the treasure trove of embarrassing gaffes to be found with a full-length reading. Even a cursory five-minute glance at Sorba’s sloppy research shows that he is not ready for Prime Time.

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Posted February 23rd, 2010 by Wayne Besen

wayne_besenWeekly Column

It is generally understood that today’s youth are more supportive of equality for gay and lesbian people. Faced with losing the next generation, fundamentalists are ferociously scrambling to capture the minds of youth through homeschooling and the subversion of public education.  By sequestering students at home or creating public schools where the only drink served in the cafeteria is Kool-Aid, they hope to reprogram tomorrow’s leaders.

It appears America’s religious fanatics are modeling their efforts on the success of radical Islamists in the Middle East, who reversed the trend of secularization in the region by hijacking education. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote about this phenomenon:

Beginning in the 1970s, the trend in Yemen, Morocco, Egypt and the Persian Gulf “was to Islamicize education as a way to fight the left…”

…Then, in 1979, after the Saudi ruling family was shaken by an attack in Mecca from its own Wahabi fundamentalists, the Saudi regime, to fend off the anger of its Wahabis, gave them free rein to Islamicize education and social life in Saudi Arabia and neighboring states.

The rest is a very sad and tragic history.

In America, according to the Aug. 7, 2009 edition of The Economist magazine, the number of children who are home-schooled—1.5 million—has doubled in the past decade, and 83 percent of home-schooling families do so for religious or moral reasons.

It is important to realize that the goal of many in the homeschooling movement is to create an army of zealot zombies who are committed to transforming America into a fundamentalist “Christian Nation.”

“We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read,” said Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense. “The most common thing I hear is parents telling me they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the farm system, some may get to the major leagues.”

Many of the cult-kiddies are coming of age and have already infiltrated Washington. Homeschoolers are well represented on Capitol Hill, and they played a disproportionate role in George W. Bush’s administration.

While many of these students are educated in terms of test scores, they may lack critical thinking skills. In a sense, they are like computers with large hard drives that have been programmed with faulty software. No matter how fast they compute they always arrive at same flawed conclusions based on the Biblical bugs planted early in their memory chips.

For example, Children’s Conferences International hosts events across the nation for homeschoolers. Their “2010 theme” is science fiction, except to keep the minds of the children pure there will be no extraterrestrials allowed.

“Parents won’t have to worry about their children learning about aliens or some mysterious force in this fun filled futuristic space age theme,” according to their website. “Children WILL learn important life lessons about trusting God, faith over atheism, and the dangers of being enamored by the world.”

Instead of E.T. and space, these poor children have to endure crazy, spaced out adults determined to strip-mine their minds and corrupt their imaginations. In my view, this is a form of child abuse and deprives these students of real childhood experiences, while making them closed-minded.

Of course, funneling children into homeschooling is not enough for these predators. In order to succeed, the extreme right must hijack the curriculum of public schools. They are already making serious inroads in Texas, with zealots on the state school board rewriting history textbooks. This is vitally important because Texas is such a large consumer of textbooks, that they essentially have the ability to set the standards for much of the nation. So, if history is rewritten in Austin, the revisions will likely appear in your state as well.

One leader of the public school putsch, according to a recent cover story in The New York Times Magazine, is Cynthia Dunbar, a member of the Texas Board of Education. In 2008, she published a book called, “One Nation Under God” where she wrote: “Hence, the only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the Founding Fathers is from a biblical worldview.” She also stated, “this battle for our nation’s children and who will control their education and training is crucial to our success for reclaiming our nation.”

For all of her passion, Dunbar is opposed to public education, writing of, “The inappropriateness of a state-created taxpayer-supported school system,” and says that sending children to public schools is akin to, “throwing them into the enemy’s flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Molech.”

Clearly, Dunbar’s real agenda is infiltrating the school system in order to destroy it.

When it comes to support, the next generation was supposed to be a wash. However, this successful trajectory is threatened if we allow today’s youth to be brainwashed. While paying attention to school boards is boring, it must become a priority for all Americans who want schools to be about education instead of indoctrination.

Posted February 17th, 2010 by Wayne Besen

(Arthur Abba Goldberg’s original article is HERE)

By: Erez Harari

arthur-abba-goldberg

“If you want to be gay, gey gezunta heit (you should live and be well)”

This catchphrase, coined by Arthur Goldberg of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) is used to illustrate that his “reparative therapy” organization believes that individuals who “choose” to be gay have every right to do so, just as an individual has a right to choose to “change”.

However, a recent article written by Arthur Goldberg on Arutz Sheva (a national Israeli news station) belies the disingenuousness of this message when Arthur lambasted a recent Yeshiva University event entitled “Being Gay in the Orthodox World”. This event was intended to illustrate some of the struggles, both internal and external, that Orthodox Jews have when trying to negotiate their religious and sexual identities (videos of the event are on vimeo.com, search: “YU gay panel”).

The purpose of the event was solely to raise awareness and tolerance, and it was explicitly stated that the event would not address halachah (Jewish law), reparative therapy, or the biological vs. social nature of sexual orientation. It was merely a chance for people to share their personal, often heart wrenching, stories about growing up gay in the Orthodox Jewish community.

This message was completely lost on Arthur Goldberg, who works with individuals “struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions” on a daily basis.

He begins his article by stating that the program “illustrates a classic strategy designed to manipulate Jews”. He clearly  twists a simple plea for awareness and sensitivity into some sort of nefarious plot concocted by individuals with sinister ulterior motives. He then suggests that the panelists, a group of four Yeshiva University alums in their 20s, some of whom only came out within the past year or two, were “clever purveyors of a propaganda effort to alter attitudes within the Orthodox community”.

It’s surprising that raising awareness of the fact that homosexuality exists in the Orthodox community and encouraging sensitivity towards homosexuals is turned into a bad thing. No one violates Torah law by being nice to people.

Arthur claims that members of the “ex-gay” community were denied an opportunity to speak on the panel. This is blatantly false. The panel was comprised exclusively of Yeshiva University students and alumni and Arthur was denied a spot on the panel because he is not an alumnus. (Read More)

Posted February 12th, 2010 by Wayne Besen

ssablueIn a post yesterday, I wrote the following:

Personally, I don’t like the bogus term “SSA”, which stands for “same-sex attraction.” There is no such thing (or diagnosis) as SSA and it is a manipulative attempt to separate LGBT people from their natural, inborn sexuality.

The term SSA is skillfully employed to make it appear as if fundamentalist bigots are not attacking the person, just their sexual feelings. It is a diabolical method of creating a medical-sounding term to deliver Anita Bryant’s hateful “love the sinner, hate the sin” message. At least Bryant had the courage to say what she believes and not hide behind euphemisms and phony pop psychology.

If you think I am wrong, ask yourself: Why does disgraced “sexual reorientation coach” Richard Cohen (pictured) love the term SSA so much? It is all over his website and his books. He is basically turning you into a sick patiecohenpegholent rather than a real person. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) also loves SSA.

We should not help our enemies by adopting their language, which is specifically designed and employed to portray us as freaks with a problem that needs to be fixed. SSA — much like STD — sounds like you have a disease that can be cured by running to the local doctor for a shot, the pharmacy for a prescription, or the shrink for a session.

If you don’t think language is important, consider yesterday’s CBS/New York Times News poll. It found a significantly higher level of support for “gays” in the military rather than “homosexuals” in the armed services.  Here is an excerpt:

A New York Times/CBS News poll finds that a majority of the public support allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military.

There’s less support, however, for allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

Confused?

The results highlight the importance of wording on the issue. In a test, half of the poll’s respondents were asked their opinion on permitting “gay men and lesbians” to serve, and the other half were asked about permitting “homosexuals” to serve.

The wording of the question proved to make a difference. Seven in 10 respondents said they favor allowing “gay men and lesbians” to serve in the military, including nearly 6 in 10 who said they should be allowed to serve openly. But support was somewhat lower among those who were asked about allowing “homosexuals” to serve, with 59 percent in favor, including 44 percent who support allowing them to serve openly.

At Truth Wins Out, we are not the word police. We allow a great divergence of opinion and if you love to use the phrase SSA, then keep doing so. It’s a free country. Please realize, however, that you are making Dr. Joseph Nicolosi and Richard Cohen quite happy by adhering to their slick public relations scheme.

More than 35 years after homosexuality was erased from the DSM (list of mental disorders) why voluntarily describe yourself in sterile, medical terms, as if you have a “problem” that quacks can “fix” for a hefty fee?

My new phrase of the week:

“It’s Gay, Not SSA”.

Posted February 9th, 2010 by Wayne Besen

john-mccainJohn McCain (R-AZ) is defending his U.S. Senate seat against a challenge from ultra-conservative radio host J.D. Hayworth. (Yes, the same Hayworth who was a very large recipient of money and gifts—like sports skyboxes—from the shamed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to the New York Times)

While voters may find McCain’s name on the ballot, the man is utterly unrecognizable, switching positions daily to mollify the unruly Tea Party crowd. According to today’s Times:

….McCain now finds himself jammed, moving starkly—and often awkwardly—to the right, apparently in an attempt to gain favor among the same voters whom Hayworth, a consistent voice for the far right, could pull toward him like taffy come summer.

McCain now sharply criticizes the bailout bill he voted for, pivoted from his earlier position that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility should be closed, offered only a muted response to the Supreme Court’s decision undoing campaign finance laws and backed down from statements that gays in the military would be OK by him if the military brass were on board.

I never agreed with John McCain’s largely conservative voting record. There once was a time, however, that he had a small independent streak and could be counted on to occasionally buck the party line. Unfortunately, he threw his integrity out the window when he chose Sarah Palin for his running mate.

He knew she was incompetent and not qualified to be President. Yet, he sold out America and placed our national security at risk for a short uptick in the polls following the Republican convention. (Read More)

Posted February 3rd, 2010 by Wayne Besen

(Weekly Column)

MosesI was surprised when I began to tear up prior to the press conference on Tuesday announcing The American Prayer Hour. The purpose of the APH, which is Thursday, February 4, is to offer an alternative to the annual National Prayer Breakfast, which takes place on the same day and is run by the secretive fundamentalist organization known as The Family. This shadowy group is directly tied to the notorious “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda.

In the past, I have worked press conferences that included hate crime victims and their families. So, I’ve become somewhat inured to the daily horrors that are inflicted on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

But, today really got to me.

Moses, a young gay man from Uganda, spoke at our media conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. He is seeking asylum in The United States, because he fears for his life in Uganda. The Ugandan media sometimes publishes the photographs and addresses of LGBT people, placing their livelihoods at risk and their lives in imminent danger.

I usually prep speakers by reviewing talking points. On this day, however, two staff members for the Human Rights Campaign prepared Moses to face the national media by obscuring his face. They stood in a corner fitting his head with a paper bag.

We had two different size bags, and he tried on each, as if they were shirts at an Old Navy store. We had to ensure that it was a snug fit, lest it fall off, reveal his identity and put his life in jeopardy.

It had been a three-day trek by car for Moses and a friend to get to Washington. This heroic journey would not end in magazine covers, book deals or fame as a talking head on the cable networks. All Moses had to gain was the opportunity to share the truth in anonymity, and he did so with remarkable equanimity.

As Moses stood in front of the podium, the juxtaposition of the American flag and this courageous young man wearing a bag to blur his humanity was jarring. I felt pride for living in a free country where we could hold a press conference to denounce The Family’s role in Uganda. But, there was also shame that America, famous for its innovation, had been exporting a virulent and violent strain of religious extremism to far away lands.

In front of the cameras, Moses recounted how he had been forced to marry a woman, was assaulted at school, raped by a policeman, and fired from his job because he is gay.

“One would rather die than come out of the closet,” Moses said at the press conference.

Many people at the National Prayer Breakfast have no idea about the radical and unorthodox, cult-like beliefs that The Family is passing off as Christianity. With little transparency and regard for democracy, this organization, which believes God favors powerful elites, spreads its influence throughout the world.

Prominent members of The Family in America include: Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla), Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Mark Pryor (R-AK), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), John Ensign (R-NV). Key House members include: Reps. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn) Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), Heath Shuler (D-NC) Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Joe Pitts (R-PA).

“Would you like a glass of fresh blood with your bacon?”

Perhaps, if this were the question asked the rich and powerful attending Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, they’d finally understand that the group behind this event was also serving up extreme ideology that wasn’t on the menu. They’d realize that while they dined in an opulent ballroom at the Washington Hilton, there were gay Ugandans who were running for their lives.

While some members of The Family have denounced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, the group’s leader, Doug Coe, usually a loquacious man, has been strangely silent. On Tuesday, Religion News Service reported that, “the Family has not officially denounced the bill, and did not return repeated requests for clarification of their role in its development.”

One would think that publicly opposing a potential slaughter would be high on Coe’s agenda, considering the sponsor of the bill, David Bahati, is a key member of The Family.

President Barack Obama will speak at The National Prayer Breakfast. Hopefully, he will denounce the Uganda bill and make a statement that could affect the dire situation in Uganda.

In the meantime, you can help by attending one of 17 American Prayer Hours across the country, including one in Washington DC. (http://www.americanprayerhour.org). It is time to unmask the horror and create a world where people are free to be themselves.

To quote another Moses: “Let my people go.”

Posted January 30th, 2010 by Wayne Besen

tim-tebowOn this site, Evan Hurst wrote about new suspicions that Tim Tebow’s mother, Pam, may be fudging her story about defying a doctor’s recommendation to abort her unborn football star son Tim (pictured left) when she was facing a difficult pregnancy in the Philippines. CBS will air a controversial Focus on the Family ad during the Super Bowl where Ms. Tebow is portrayed as a hero, ironically, for choosing life.

The problem is, it appears unlikely that Tebow could have made this decision, since abortion is outlawed in the Philippines. Those who violate the law are often prosecuted and jailed.

As the facts come out, Ms. Tebow’s tale is under increased scrutiny. And if there is one thing we know, fundamentalists love magic stories of transformation, even if they are not true. In fact, the entire “ex-gay” industry is built on whoppers that often set a compelling narrative, but are left factually wanting.

Let’s be clear. The veracity of Ms. Tebow’s story may be verified. She could be honestly and sincerely recounting a true event in her life.

But, if Tebow is twisting the facts or exaggerating the circumstances to fit a desired storyline, perhaps she thinks that she can get away with it because the alleged incident took place overseas.

pat-tillmanHowever, the truth almost always seeps out. Focus on the Family and Pam Tebow should remember the cautionary tale of another football player, Pat Tillman (pictured left). The military shamefully tried to conceal how the gridiron star turned soldier died at war in Afghanistan. They invented a heroic fictional storyline and thought they could get away with it because the incident took place in a distant land.

They were wrong.

If Focus on the Family executives believe that they can air a hoax and won’t be exposed as frauds, they are in greater denial than the hapless token “ex-gays” they keep on-staff.

A  multi-million dollar ad aired during the Super Bowl will likely be investigated. Remember, there is a doctor still out there (unless he or she has passed away) who offered the alleged abortion advice to Pam Tebow. This doctor, if found, could very well contradict the her story.

Focus on the Family-1Focus on the Family is already facing serious challenges, such as cutbacks and layoffs due to the recession. Their founder, James Dobson, is leaving the group next month to start a rival radio ministry with his son Ryan. If Mrs. Tebow’s story turns out to be a con job, her fable could destroy this once venerable, and now vulnerable, right wing organization. (Focus compound pictured left)

If they are wise, leaders of the Colorado Springs-based ministry will immediately dispatch a team of private investigators to the Philippines to rigorously fact check this fishy story. If they find a discrepancy and have the decency to pull the ad, Americans will be very forgiving. If the ad airs, however, and it is a fraud, they will lose face, trash their honor, destroy their reputation, and squander their already low stockpile of credibility.

Focus on the Family’s name is clearly on the line with this ad. If a mistake of consequence and magnitude is made, it will haunt this group and may cause the organization to go out of business.

Posted January 23rd, 2010 by Wayne Besen

tea-party-pictureThe more I read about the Tea Party, the more it becomes vividly clear that this is nothing more than a Great Tea Purge of Republican moderates and independent thinkers. This process was already underway for years. It began when Ralph Reed was hired by Pat Robertson to form The Christian Coalition. Reed took the huge mailing list compiled from Robertson’s quixotic run for President in 1988 and transformed it into a movement.

Having placed basically every blue-nosed busybody in a database, Reed set out to hijack the Republican Party. He had a stealth strategy of taking over school boards, local GOP committees and city councils under the radar. Once this was accomplished, his largely clandestine movement came out of the closet and stole Congress. Unfortunately, Washington has never been the same, with collegiality in shambles and extremism replacing reasonable debate. In short, Reed and Robertson soiled our nation to fulfill their sinister goal of turning America into a theocracy.

The Christian Coalition ran out of steam. However, this new Tea Bag movement has picked up where they left off. Phillip Glass is using his National Precinct Alliance to hijack the GOP by signing up Tea Baggers to run the party. In the process, they are running out moderates and finishing the job that the Christian Coalition’s Reed set out to do.

So, what is the Tea Party (Purge)?

It is a brilliant coup by Big Business to co-opt the American government, by using dim-witted fundamentalists and under-educated, under-employed rural folks to carry their water. Look at the issues:

1) Climate Change: Irresponsible members of Big Business do not want to pay to stop the damage corporations have done to our planet. They want to continue polluting and exploiting our natural resources. The best way to do this is to trick people, by flooding the Internet with fake science, into believing climate change is not man made. The next step is to turn the government into a bogeyman, so “the people” will reduce its power to regulate corporate excess and corruption.

The end result will be dirtier water, filthier air, sicker families and dwindling natural resources. Of course, the powerful and wealthy CEO’s won’t notice. While your children choke on the dust and grit, they will be yachting off to the few remaining private islands that are not despoiled by greed and pollution.

2) Taxes: One of the most irresponsible parts of this “movement” is that Americans should not have to pay their fair share of taxes. This whole idea that you can get something for nothing is a mirage and the poor families who scream and act the fool at Tea Bag protests are the ones who will be left without basic services if this radical agenda becomes enacted.

Here is a dirty little secret. Developing countries are only “Third World” for the desperately poor (i.e. the majority.) The sliver of wealthy people in these nations often live like kings. They have privatized services  and are pampered in every imaginable way. They frequently jet off to beautiful flats in Paris, New York and London, while “the people” suffer in anonymity back home. While living in such luxury, these elites have little incentive to make life better for the impoverished masses.

By significantly eroding or eliminating the tax base, the majority of Americans would lose government services – from clean water to garbage pick-up, to affordable education to job training, to pathogen-free meat to reliable transportation (such as train service). The CEO’s would save a fortune on taxes, while using private companies to pay for services no longer available to average Americans.

They win. You lose.

Meanwhile, when people become angry over the situation, these titans will spend millions of dollars on propaganda to blame the deterioration of America on liberal morals and government incompetence – even as they starve the government of the resources it needs to effectively do its job.

What a scam.

The hard truth is, these avaricious conservatives and their Tea Party tools are going to turn America into a Third World nation, where there is a huge gulf between rich and poor. Look around – it is already happening.

Wake up Tea Baggers. You are dupes who are forfeiting your family’s future and don’t even realize it.

3) Health Care: CEO’s and their families will always receive top-notch health care and cutting edge medicine. But, increasingly, they see little incentive for workers and average Americans to get the same benefits and level of care. By crushing labor unions and buying off politicians, thanks to our Supreme Court, they can easily replace sick workers with younger, healthier models.

The CEO’s have used this gullible Tea Bag crowd to convince a majority of people that the government is inefficient and should stay out of health-care. I guess these “real Americans” are content having potential treatments for their children rejected by faceless insurance company bureaucrats sitting in sterile cubicles with the job of protecting a corporation’s bottom line.

Do these tools realize how they have been tricked by hucksters like former Congressman Dick Armey (R-TX) – who now runs FreedomWorks, an umbrella for Tea Party groups? Armey is a corporate shill who is robbing your family of its future. However, too many people think he is on their side because he wears cowboy boots and uses quaint, folksy sayings.

Catch a clue – Armey cares nothing about your freedom. Armey is a con artist – an actor – posing as a good ole’ boy outsider, when he is the ultimate insider. Yet, countless Americans keep falling for his phony snake charmer act.

4) Illegal Immigration & Gays: The corporate titans realize that if they ran on a platform of, “We manipulate the system to steal your money and you go broke”, they would not do so well in elections. So, they have developed the cat-with-a-laser technique.

When I want to distract Critter, my cat, I shine a laser on the wall and he runs to attack it. He never actually catches the gosh-darn-red-light, but he always feels like he’s getting close. More importantly, he expends a lot of energy – and then takes a multi-hour slumber.

Tea Baggers – you are the cat and the issues of immigration and gay rights are the laser. You are being distracted, busied on a circular obstacle course and ultimately being put to sleep – even as you feel you are accomplishing something.

I have news for you.

You are never going to stop people from crossing the border, as long as there are better economic opportunities in America. You are never going to stop gay people from dating and mating. No matter how high you build that wall, or how many Proposition H8 measures you spend millions of dollars to enact. You are essentially wasting your time and money. You will eliminate gay people and immigrants, right after you accomplish winning that great war against marijuana or electing pure Christian politicians who won’t cheat on their spouses.

It ain’t going to happen, so the sooner you drop the expensive fantasy, the sooner we can all move on to real issues that will actually improve the lives of our families.

Of course, by adopting extreme anti-government, anti-regulatory economic policies, we will ruin the economy for all but the robber-barons. With few decent-paying blue-collar jobs left in America, hard-working Mexican immigrants will just stay at home. And, those loudmouths at the Tea Party rallies will have no choice but to fill their threadbare shoes – picking tomatoes and mowing laws.

Sadly, these folks will be happy performing such labor-intensive, menial tasks, because – a bad job is better than no job. And, the joke is, the radical politicians they helped elect to destroy America’s economy will make these dupes feel important by feeding them propaganda about opportunity, freedom and hard work.

“If you just scrub that toilet a little bit harder, you’ll be an entrepreneur in the opportunity-based society and one day smoke cigars on the country club golf course with Rush Limbaugh,” I can hear the hired PR guns say. (Read More)

Posted January 6th, 2010 by Christina Engela

Eight Steps

Never again“, the world says – and yet genocide has occurred numerous times since 1945. The most infamous recent example is in Rwanda, but Saddam Hussein also dabbled in genocide against the Kurds in Iraq back in the 1980s. And it still goes on today – with the state-sponsored murders of gay people in Iran, the religious fundamentalist militias in Iraq, the mob violence and murders of gay people in Jamaica and Uganda. The laws being passed in numerous countries which turn ordinary people into criminals and fugitives based solely on their sexuality or gender identity are a precursor to genocide. They put it in people’s minds that such people are a threat and are in fact criminals.

(Read More)