Stroll Discovery - Pigeon Shit Aside

While still recovering from my sinus infection (now hacking only during mornings and evenings), I decided to make another stroll through Lake Merced.


There's a monumental statue off the side of the road: a monument to Juan Bautista De Anza, donated  by the citizens of Sonora, Mexico. As bronze statues go, it's fairly mundane and the only truly beautiful thing about it is the horse. It (the statue) didn't have much in the way of bird droppings, so I decided to look De Anza up, thinking that he was a nasty enough character that even the birds didn't deign to shit on him. 


It turns out I was he was a trifle wrong: it seems that he was an explorer trying to find workable land routes to Alta California, and although he took three padres on his expeditions, there are no findings of the forced conversions normal for the time. The statue's plaque, however, incorrectly listed him as the "founder" of San Francisco when  in fact, he never made an establishment here, that being the job of Moraga.


I wonder if De Anza appreciates the setting: on one side busy highway and on the other side,  a lake with gorgeous sunsets.


Not bad.

Tennessee Gets The Call: Slouching Towards Africa, The Lou Engle-Honored State Proudly Touts The Right To Bully

Over four year ago, the state of Tennessee made a proclamation raising "prophet" Lou Engle to genuine religious icon status:

On April 9th, 2007 the One Hundred Fifth General Assembly of the State of Tennessee and the House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing and blessing TheCall and Lou Engle, passed by the Tennessee state legislature.
A resolution is a deeper legislative act than a "proclamation". A resolution carries more weight of authority, and goes through a more complicated legal process before passing.

And now, Tennessee - the state that never got over the Scopes trial* - is emulating Engle's work in Africa by pushing a bill that would definitely make it OK to bully gays in schools - for religious purposes, of course.

Harassment, intimidation, or bullying prevention task forces, programs, and other initiatives formed by school districts, including any curriculum adopted for such purposes, shall not include materials or training that explicitly or implicitly promote a political agenda, make the characteristics of the victim the focus rather than the conduct of the person engaged in harassment, intimidation, or bullying, or teach or suggest that certain beliefs or viewpoints are discriminatory when an act or practice based on such belief or viewpoint is not a discriminatory practice as defined in 4-21-102(4).

Last July, Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law a measure that prohibits local districts from passing and enforcing any anti-discrimination laws stricter than the ones set down by the state of Tennessee (hint: the state doesn't have any real anti-discrimination laws). The state legislature also created a firestorm in prohibiting educators from discussing homosexuality in schools with the infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill (see video below).

Tennessee has been known for years to house anti-gay hate-mongers ala Fred Phelps, people like Glynis Bethel who pepper-sprayed a woman who protested her anti-gay preaching, then pepper-sprayed the police who took her into custody. And the country made note of the gay bashing attacked instigated by one young man's own preacher father. But the latest attempt by the Tennessee legislature to allow anti-gay bullying is considered a step back in time and culture. Or in a lock-step with the likes of Uganda.

Too Close To Home


But while leaders of the anti-gay movement in Uganda were spurred on by the likes of Lou Engle and The Call (his ministry), the efforts of Engle and his followers in the U.S. have garnered attention mainly for their anti-Muslim attacks, side-lining their influence in local governments like the counties of Tennessee on issues of anti-gay discrimination.


So just who is supporting the bill?


FACT (?)

The leading proponent of the bill is the Family Action Council of Tennessee, a social conservative group linked to Focus On The Family and to the virulently anti-gay Family Research Council. And the leader of FACT is former Republican state senator, David Fowler who now admits that he has helped create a firestorm, but seems to be rather proud of it: In an interview, Fowler said, "the purpose is to stop bullying, not create special classes of people who are more important than others."

In the past, the denial of Fowler and FACT concerning anti-gay bullying in the suicide of teen Jacob Rogers demonstrated how uncompromising in its attitude towards teen sexual identity many people in Tennessee are:

The Nashville Scene reported that, according to FACT, Rogers' suicide was a result of "the rotten fruit of the all-about-me individualist culture that comes when we deny the existence of God and his image in us."

But for some people, the way to stop bullying is to yank the kids of FACT's families out of school: "You're going to hell" is a common bullying tactic too often heard by gay teens across the country and it is this particular tactic that FACT wants to preserve.

Because Tennessee has over 35 designated hate groups in the state, it ranks as one of the most serious outposts of hate in the country per capita.**

FACT will definitely make the total 36.

*Rhea county, where the Scopes Trial was held, celebrates Scopes' conviction annually. It is also the county that tried to get the state to pass a resolution allowing it to criminalize homosexuality.
**According to the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are 9 KKK affiliates in the state.

And finally, the rhetoric of Lou Engle:


If we’re struggling with a homosexual, same-sex desire, LET THE BIBLE KILL YOU, rather than make it easier for you, and say well, there must be a better scriptural answer to this …

The Tale of the Beautiful Big Brother

Just read this one. But makes you stop and think about what the father is going to do when those kids get home. I shudder to think!

Serenity Amidst Chaos: Keeping It Alive.

That's what we all strive for, I guess.


I took a stroll around Lake Merced - for the first time since I've moved here. I set aside the thoughts of the day: Rick Santorum's win in Iowa, Cindy Jacobs' fake miracles, the unabashed righteous arrogance of the Christian Right, the political circus yet to come. 


The good and the bad of living in SF's Park Merced: it's remoteness. Cabs won't come here. MUNI's M line is the pits and really the only thing out here transit-wise. Some long time residents of SF don't even know where it is. They think it's in Oakland. But the serenity of Lake Merced is awesome and exactly a twenty-two minute walk from my apartment. 


Even though I fought too hard to keep my apartment here, there are times that I wonder: why? 


Thank God for my stroll. 

Shopping For Toilet Paper

Scheduling. Life is all about scheduling. Structure. Where do I fit in writing about prophetess Cindy Jacobs and shopping for toilet paper? Of course, separating the two is the hard part. 


Yeah, it's all about scheduling. Sometimes passion interferes: I get started on something at 10pm, then don't finish 'til 3am. which screws up the next morning. 


Scheduling. Cycling. Groove. 

Life Begins on January 3rd

For me, at least.


The Holidays were good. Better than could be expected, in fact: I didn't spend them in a 12'x12' SRO on 6th Street which is where some people wanted me to be. I still have my cats, Katie Scarlett and Chloe Anastasia. I have sex occasionally - not as much as I want, but I'm working on my social skills. 


So what do I do now, after the Holidays? 


I live. No, I LIVE. I schedule. I write. I work out. I take my meds. I cook. I socialize. I become involved in people's lives. I try to help people. I work on my book. I look for writing gigs. I work on my 4x4 community garden plot. I read more facebook. I go to therapy. 


I make sure that all is well with my world. Well, as best as I can. 


Yes, life began today. 


It's all I've got. Its all I can give. 

Driving The Clown Car: A (Serious) Look At GOP Campaign Managers With Nonetheless HILARIOUS UDATES!es

BREAKING: Herman Cain's defection didn't quell the laugh riot.

When the clown car opens and spills its laugh-laden contents, the last one out is usually the driver, and with the GOP circus in full swing, it's time to stop and think about who the hell is actually running the show. Of course, so many aides and managers bailed out in the last 6 months, that the resulting confusion only adds to the hilarity: these guys are willing to throw their candidates under the clown car by continuing with the blunders. What do they have to gain, you may ask? Possibly a future position as ringmaster for another circus: the next GOP campaign pandering to Tea Partyers and the Christian Right.

Then again, all the buffoonery may be the fault of the candidates, hurling themselves through their campaigns without giving a second thought to what their managers think giving rise to the question: why did they hire these guys at all? As nannies, perhaps? And who, exactly, is running the show? 

Experience, dealings with the Christian Right, odd endorsements procured, campaign issues tackled and the latest events: all might shed some light on these politicos and the clown campaigns they manage.

Joe Allbaugh (Rick Perry)

Joe Allbaugh's wikipedia biography stops mysteriously at 2008, not mentioning any connection to Perry. Perhaps it was removed out of embarrassment, because Allbaugh's political and lobbying career shows a marked intelligence peppered with ruthlessness. He was, after all, George Bush's campaign manager for the 2000 election and head of FEMA until the ill-fated "Brownie" took over. And before that, presided over then-Governor Bush's "Fomalde-gate" scandal (involving the funeral industry).It also shows no significant connection with the Christian Right. So, does Allbaugh have any say in Perry's campaign, or is he just window dressing?

It's odd to think that Allbaugh had anything to do with "The Response" (Perry's call-to-prayer for the state of Texas), his ineptitude during the debates, or his fatal campaign ad, "Strong." But remember that Perry is of the same mold as George Bush - and Bush seldom listened to advisers. Then again, Joe Allbaugh may be jettisoning Perry out of the clown car while secretly feathering his own nest: his firm, Allbaugh Company, has operated with, Halliburton, Ecosphere Systems and  Dilligence, Iraq (a security/mercenary company).

Rick Perry doesn't seem to know (or care) what his campaign manager is all about. Figures.

Endorsements: 

Dean Cain, actor, of Lois and Clark (Superman) fame. Couldn't Allbaugh get Chuck Norris? 

Steve Forbes - of course, a "corporate personhood" donor.

The Latest: Rick Perry's taxpayer-paid security detail costs continue to skyrocket. Perry insists that his campaign travels are beneficial to the state of Texas. Right.

Mike Krull (Newt Gingrich)

Trying to look for Newt Gingrich's campaign manager under Google is like looking for a needle in a haystack: most of the coverage of his campaign management has been how his staff deserted him en masse. But a look in an article on his wife Calista reveals that it's HER friend, Mike Krull who has filled the crucial gap. 

Calista Gingrich may, in fact, be the REAL manager of Newt's campaign. Her "column" on his website titled "Calista's Canvass" reveals just how much more involved she is with the campaign. Is it she or Krull who were instrumental in getting endorsements from the American Family Association and homophobic hate monger, pastor Jim Garlow?

But looking at Krull: at first glance, he seems to suffer from the GOP malady of inept vetting. Not vetting your own candidate properly, that is. A campaign manager MUST know absolutely EVERYTHING about the candidate's past. Period. In effect, he must know the candidate better than the candidate knows himself: he has to ward off any criticism and have an answer for any peccadillo or indiscretion. 

Endorsements:

Columbia Tea Party

Tea Party Nation

Des Moines Tea Party

These endorsements may be indicative of Calista's influence, not Krull's.

The Latest: Newt Gingrich has lied about his first divorce: his website says that first wife Jackie Gingrich, requested the divorce, but CNN has uncovered documents stating not only that Gingrich instigated the procedures, but that he was negligent in child support and owed three months in support of Jackie and their two daughters, teenagers at the time. Mike Krull's/Gingrich's campaign's insistence that the opposite was true only makes Krull look inept in the face of legitimacy: Gingrich's mea culpas become more disingenuous as time goes by, weakening his support by the Christian Right.   

The Latest II: When it was discovered that Gingrich did not make the ballot on the Virginia primaries, his response was to compare the event toe Pearl Harbor (?!?): 

“Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected setback, but we will regroup and refocus.” 

Did they agree on what to do if the analogy was ridiculed? For Krull's sake, we hope not.

John Tate (Ron Paul)

As with Newt Gingrich's campaign manager, googling for John Tate presents a problem: most of the articles are on the demise of Kent Snyder, his former campaign manager who died uninsured and whose estate owed $400,000 in medical bills as a consequence. The (now) infamous interview with Wolf Blitzer pointed out how many people of Paul's ranks would just "let them die" if people elected not to have health insurance. Although Snyder's case was a bit different (he was denied health care because of a pre-existing condition), it put Paul in  an embarrassing position after he had stated that "our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it." Paul's lobbing of compassion over to the churches, however, is quite misplaced: they can't handle the volume of people with needs, nor do many of them accept people with needs in a totally compassionate (non-qualifying) way.

So how is his new campaign manager, John Tate, looking at Health Care Reform? Tate's history as a Paul supporter and president of Campaign for Liberty (a libertarian - no government group) can unearth Tate's stance on health care (see video below). Total free enterprise in terms of health care basically reiterates the former physician's stance that the only good uninsured American is a dead uninsured American. 

Endorsements:

John Stossel

Chuck Norris (yes, instead of endorsing Rick Perry - maybe it was the Brokeback Mountain jacket that turned off Norris)

Andrew Sullivan. Not. Sullivan withdrew his support after further investigation into Paul's foreign policies.

Latest: In a FOX News update concerning the racially charge newsletters under Paul's name back in the 80's, total denial is the name of the game.

"These things are really nasty, and he didn't know about it? Wasn't aware of it?" Gingrich said at a stop in South Carolina.


Paul has since denied writing, and in some cases even reading, some of the newsletters that bore his name. But the issue could continue to haunt him as he rides a wave of support in Iowa at just the right time.

Again, this looks like a case of not knowing the candidate's history inside-out.

Keith Nahigian (Michele Bachmann)

It's probably fitting that Keith Nahigian was responsible for Dan Quayle's infamous "potatoe" gaffe: Bachmann is so prone to gaffes that spin comes from the chin. In any case, Nahigian has had over twenty years to learn from the mistake in thinking that politicians are intelligent. 

Then again, Nahigian's own gaffes (or rather, unfortunate quotes) have not given Bachmann's campaign additional dignity:

Michele Bachmann’s campaign manager lashed out at a CBS executive after he was accidentally cc’d on a network email detailing a plan to marginalize the Minnesota Congresswoman at Saturday night's Republican debate.
"John Dickerson should be fired," the Rep.’s political handler Keith Nahigian told reporters after the debate, CNN and Fox reported. "He is a piece of sh---. He is a fraud and should be fired."

The overspill from the Santorum scandal (Vander Plaats asked Bachmann to 'merge" with Santorum) did nothing to deter Nahigian from taking strategies for Iowa from Santorum's campaign:

Earlier in the week, Bachmann’s team announced that they were taking a page from Santorum’s playbook and would make campaign stops in all 99 counties in Iowa before the caucus on Jan. 3. Bachmann will start this campaign swing in Northwest Iowa on Friday and continue throughout the weekend.

Great. Taking it's cue from a tanking campaign so it can pander to the Christian Right is very, very smart thinking. 

Endorsements:

Phyllis Schafley. Even though she didn't send her gay son to Marcus Bachmann's pray-away-the-gay clinic.

Wayne Newton. He didn't go to Bachmann's clinic either. 

Latest:



Nahigian himself sounds as vague and clueless as Bachmann. Witness his response (below) to a question on Isreal (referring to Ron Paul's remark that he wished Israel was not a state)

Mike Biundo (Rick Santorum, 

New Hampshire and Beyond)

The former aide to Pat Buchanan's primary effort in Iowa back in 1996 should know better about reining in a candidate, but Mike Biundo has worked on Santorum's campaigns so long that he can't seem to see the forest from the trees. 

Biundo on key New Hampshire endorsement going to Newt Gingrich. 

“Rick is running a traditional New Hampshire style, door-to-door, town-hall-to-town-hall grassroots campaign,” said Biundo, a New Hampshire native. “We are looking forward to a positive result on January 10th here in New Hampshire.”

Door-to-door at this point, when Santorum is only maintaining the 5% slot is, at best, a weak excuse for a weak campaign. True, Santorum never had the entertainment appeal of Rick Perry, whose calls to Christianism have sparked debate and parody, but Santorum's moralizing overshadows all aspects of his persona. His demonization of Islam, the possibilities of Sharia law and implications that Muslims are terrorists, have become rallying cries to a few right-wing bloggers.

Endorsements:

Bob Vander Plaats. Cost: $1 million. Scandal: Priceless

Brad Thor. The thriller author's book, The Last Patriot, pandered to extreme fears of takeover by Islamic terrorists.

Latest: Biundo has tried to play down the Vander Plaats "pay for play" scandal by saying that Santorum was never really approached byVander Plaats. Santorum says differently, contradicting Biundo.  

Matt Rhoades (Mitt Romney)

Matt Rhoades has been with Mitt Romney since 2008, after being director of "opposition research" for George Bush's campaign in 2004.

His colleagues would later tell National Journal that his opposition research work helped discredit Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on national security issues in particular, or as The Hotline put it in 2006, "Campaign officials credit him with doing more than just about any other staffer to define John Kerry as weak, wimpy, French and flip-floppy -- an unacceptable Commander in Chief."

So it seems that Rhoades is dealing with the very same type of character he "exposed" which, if he can turn overturn the perception of Romney as "flip-floppy" he is an extremely good manager indeed. He also has an extremely good relationship with Matt Drudge (The Drudge Report). But how has he dealt with the Mormon issue?

He hasn't. Probably because he's allowing the Christian Right to hang itself on the issue. "Mormonism is a cult" is a meme that has worn itself thin and Rhoades, being the opposition analyst that he is, knows that this kind of push-back can actually work in Romney's favor. Be he weak or flip-floppy, Romney needs an underdog persona. Rhoades is already concentrating on the "kill Romney" attack strategy that the Obama Administration flatly denies. Rhoades knows the validity of hanging on to a persecution campaign.

Endorsements:

JP Morgan Chase
Former First Lady Barbara Bush. Pearls notwithstanding.


Latest:


The recent tele-town hall Florida apparance by Romney didn't seem to quell fears of elitism and flip-flopping. Rhoades can't seem to get Romney into that "everyman" mode he so desperately wants - and needs.

Either the clowns are running the circus or the campaign managers are - it's tough to decide: from ruthless right wingers like Allbaugh, to clueless politicos such as Nahigian, campaign managers look to be throwing their candidates under the clown car for purposes only they know. Perhaps, instead of the driving the cars, they decided early on that it would be best if they just sat back and enjoy the ride and its ensuing slapstick chaos along with the "suckers born every minute."


Who will be laughing after the primaries?