Friday Reads

Good Morning!

The same news is dominating the cycle.  Republicans have gone crazy attempting to circumvent the democratic process in order to instill the religious right’s anti-abortion views on the country. People are still playing ‘Where’s Snowden?’  Every one is hashing over the new SCOTUS decisions and watching to see if Trayvon Martin will find justice and his parents will get peace.  The Supreme Court’s term this year has brought up speculation about Ruth Bader Ginsberg and possible retirement.

At age 80, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, says she is in excellent health, even lifting weights despite having cracked a pair of ribs again, and plans to stay several more years on the bench.

In a Reuters interview late on Tuesday, she vowed to resist any pressure to retire that might come from liberals who want to ensure that Democratic President Barack Obama can pick her successor before the November 2016 presidential election.

Ginsburg said she had fallen in the bathroom of her home in early May, sustaining the same injury she suffered last year near term’s end.

“I knew immediately what it was this time,” she said, adding that there was nothing to do but take pain killers and wait out the six weeks as her ribs healed. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said on Wednesday that the day after the May 2 incident, Ginsburg was examined at the Office of the Attending Physician at the Capitol and then went about her regular schedule.

I’ve been so tired of all the assaults on women, minorities, and the GLBT by the religious right in this country that I’ve nearly taken to leaving the TV off and limiting my time looking at the news.  Here’s some of the things these folks have to say about women.

Women are made to be led, and counseled, and directed. . . . And if I am not a good man, I have no just right in this Church to a wife or wives, or the power to propagate my species. What then should be done with me? Make a eunuch of me, and stop my propagation. –Heber C. Kimball, venerated early LDS apostle (1801-1868)

·         A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. –Official statement of Southern Baptist Convention, Summer 1998, (15.7 million members)

·         The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. — Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader (1930–)

The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands. –James Fowler, Women in the Church, 1999.

·         Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture. –Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill nondenominational mega-church franchise.  (1970–)

This just makes me want to airdrop them all on the Taliban so they can have their little wars all to themselves. 

Here’s a great little bit of information that relates today’s shrill TeaBots to the real Boston Tea Party Patriots?  What would the founders have done with today’s group?

The fact is, the Founding Fathers would have hated the Tea Party – misspelled signs and all.Yes, you heard that right, they would have despised the ammo-hoarding sycophants of AM talk radio for a number of reasons, and would have likely lined them up in front of a firing squad or fitted them for a noose if this was the 18th century.

First of all, the original Tea Party was a protest of being forced to pay taxes on imported goods for which there was no competition. The East India Trading Company had the cozy relationship with the British government that allowed them to have a monopoly on tea and other items. Imagine Walmart being the only store from which you could buy and they dictated both cost and taxes on everything. The real Tea Party wasn’t about mentally unstable rants about oppressive government and imagined Muslim takeovers, it was about actual oppressive government in which there was no representation for the colonists.

In the modern United States, we do have representation and theoretically, everyone can vote. The American Revolution used bullets because ballots weren’t available and the East India Tea Company had too much power in government. Now we have ballots and so-called “patriots” are trying to take away voting rights, talking about using bullets if they don’t get what they want, and supporting corporate power in government via Citizens United. You know, the opposite of what the Founding Fathers and the real Tea Party were all about.

The Tea Party is ramping up against the immigration bill.  And of course, Fox News knows all about it.

After spending weeks dealing with the fallout from the IRS targeting scandal, Tea Party groups are starting to focus their energy on the immigration bill — a development that could imperil President Obama’s hopes for a speedy approval.

Before adjourning for the Fourth of July holiday break, the Senate easily approved its version of the legislation. The bill now rests with the House, where Republicans say they will take up their own version.

Obama, during his Africa trip, called on the House to “get this done” before the August recess.

But House lawmakers already are hearing conservative calls to slow things down. And if the debate leaks into August — when Congress takes a nearly month-long recess — the prospects could get even more wobbly. The Tea Party, during the 2009 August recess, famously helped stall ObamaCare by storming town hall meetings and other events.

Tea Party groups may be preparing to again mount demonstrations during the summer break. And even if the House passes a bill this month, it’s unlikely the two chambers would be able to agree on a unified piece of legislation by August — leaving the work unfinished going into recess.

While Tea Partiers await that opening, they’re already beginning to stir the pot.

Earlier this week, dozens of conservative groups including the Cincinnati Tea Party sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner urging him to declare the Senate package “dead on arrival.” They complained that the Senate bill, by virtue of giving up to 11 million illegal immigrants a shot at legal status, would make life harder for U.S. workers “struggling to reach the bottom rung of the economic ladder.”