Tuesday, 27 August 2013
Ken Cuccinelli may be the darling of the spittle flecked Christofascists who want a Christian theocracy in Virginia and the knuckle draggers of the Tea Party, but the recent polling suggests that Cuccinelli - or Kookinelli, as I prefer to call him - isn't gaining need traction among moderates and independents to win in November (I hope this trend continues). In stark contrast, Republican Chris Christie appears headed towards a landslide reelection in New Jersey. Some suggest that Kookinelli should learn a thing or two from Christie. I would argue that such a transformation is impossible for Kookinelli, especially given his documented record of extremism. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the night and day differences between the two GOP candidates. Here are highlights:
Chris Christie and Ken Cuccinelli are both New Jersey natives, Republicans, and their party’s gubernatorial nominee in their respective states. Beyond that, they share little else.Christie, the governor of New Jersey, is a moderate conservative cruising to reelection; Cuccinelli, currently the attorney general of Virginia, is the darling of the GOP base and not much more. Christie has a double-digit lead over his Democratic challenger, State Senator Barbara Buono; Cuccinelli is down by about five points to former Democratic National Committee Chair, Clinton crony, and alleged grifter Terry McAuliffe, according to the latest pair of polls.
Christie’s strength in the reliably blue Garden State and Cuccinelli’s weakness in the Old Dominion are about persona, policy, and political reality. Christie knows that he’s the governor of a state that has consistently gone for Democratic presidential candidates over the last two decades. On the other hand, Cuccinelli fantasizes that Virginia voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney, and that ethnic-slurring George Allen made it to the Senate.But Cuccinelli’s problems go deeper than that. Right now, he is underperforming even Romney’s showing in Virginia. Romney lost the state, but still managed to win its upscale voters and white women—Cuccinelli is losing both blocs to McAuliffe.
Cuccinelli owned stock in Star Scientific, the very same company whose chief, Jonnie Williams, showered both McDonnell and Cuccinelli with gifts—gifts that Cuccinelli has refused to return in kind or in cash. In all, only $18,000 or so is involved, and yet Cuccinelli cannot find it in himself to cut a check. Not surprisingly, McAuliffe hammers away on this sore point, leaving Cuccinelli trailing and the story festering.More worrisome for Republicans is Cuccinelli’s incapability of eliding over hot-button social issues. As Virginia’s outgoing Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling sees it, Cuccinelli is a “rigid ideologue who thrives on conflict and confrontation and tends to be drawn to the more controversial and divisive issues of the day.”
Christie, meanwhile, is tradition-minded but not mired in debates over ultrasound wands or sodomy. He flatly stated that sexual orientation is a matter of biological predisposition. . . . . He hasn’t dabbled with birtherism, in contrast to Cuccinelli.
Christie is of the modern world; Cuccinelli less so. For Republicans in Virginia and nationally, that is a problem. As one Republican White House veteran and Virginian put it, “the race is between a crook and a kook, and I expect the crook to win.”Sadly for Cuccinelli, while voters may say “ugh” about “the Macker,” they have yet to walk away from him. Much as Cuccinelli may try to talk about taxes and roads, not enough voters are buying. A well-funded McAuliffe ad blitz is cementing an image of Virginia’s attorney general as fixated on social issues.Cuccinelli’s struggle is compounded by the fact that Virginia’s demographics dramatically shifted, making it emblematic of the New South. Indeed, nothing tells the story better than a recent Quinnipiac Poll showing Hillary with comfortable leads over Christie and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in a hypothetical 2016 presidential matchup. She polls ahead of Christie by nine, and crushes Cruz by almost 20 points.
The times are changing, and the question for Cuccinelli and the Republicans is whether they can change with them. The GOP cannot continue to behave as if the whole country were a Republican primary—not if it endeavors to recapture the presidency.
Monday, 26 August 2013
Before the Russian Revolutions of 1917 - first the February Revolution and then the Bolshevik Revolution in October/November - one of the mainstays to the retardation of Russia's modernization and movement towards a constitutional monarchy was the Russian Orthodox Church. Now, while modern developed countries around the world are rejecting anti-gay bigotry and discrimination in favor of modern scientific knowledge on sexual orientation, Vladimir Putin - much like his Tsarist predecessors - is listening to the idiocy and ignorance of the revived Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy and pushing an anti-gay and anti-modernity agenda. Putin is stupidly focused on the short term goal of hanging on to power at any cost with no thought or concern for the long term damage done or the lives ruined by the state sponsored bigotry that he has endorsed.
In their quest to save the Russian monarchy, Nicholas II and Alexandra unwittingly set the stage for the revolutions of 1917 and the ultimate fall of Russia to the Bolsheviks and the ensuing civil war between the Whites and the Reds which damaged Russia so severely that economic output did not return to 1913 levels until the eve of World War II. In the intervening years, millions of Russians perished. By embracing the far right and the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin is repeating the same mistakes and making Russia a laughing stock in the process. Now, as the Moscow Times reports, efforts are in motion to establish state sponsored "ex-gay" programs to turn Russian gays straight. Here are highlights on this lastest idiocy from Russia:
Degtyaryov said that the Duma is also considering a program to provide anonymous and voluntary counseling for gay and bisexual people who want to be heterosexual.
"Many want to return to a normal life, to become heterosexual like 95 to 99 percent of our citizens," Degtyaryov said.
He also said that failure to forbid homosexuals from donating blood is a type of "sabotage."
LGBT activist Nikolai Alexeyev said that . . . . There will be a lot of noise, and zero implementation of the law. Our politicians are so detached from reality that they no longer have any connection to the people. They just imagine gay people everywhere," Alexeyev told reporters.
Unlike many states in America, the state of New Mexico never enacted explicit gay marriage bans through either statutes or an anti-gay amendment to the New Mexico Constitution. As a result in the wake of the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor - which among other things correctly identified anti-gay animus as the real motivation behind DOMA - several counties in New Mexico have started issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. And as reported previously on this blog, the New Mexico attorney general has announced that he will not oppose the issuance of such licenses. To further confuse the mix of legal directives, now a judge has ordered county clerks to proceed with the issuance of marriage licenses to same sex couples. Here are highlights from BuzzFeed:
A New Mexico judge has ordered the county clerks of Bernalillo and Sante Fe counties to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples who apply and are otherwise qualified.
Because the clerk in Santa Fe County already began issuing licenses last week, as did the clerk of Dona Ana County, the addition of Bernalillo County into the mix makes a third county in the state where licenses will be issued to same-sex couples.
Issuing a peremptory writ of mandamus, Judge Alan Malott found Monday that the couples suing for a right to marry in one of the only states in the nation without either marriage equality or an explicit ban on such marriages have a “significant likelihood of success” on the merits of their lawsuit. In reading his ruling in open court Monday, Malott said he ordered that:New Mexico law, Malott found, “does not preclude nor prohibit issuance of a marriage license to otherwise qualified couples on the basis of sexual orientation or the gender of its members.”.To the extent it is found to do so, “those prohibitions are unconstitutional and unenforceable under” New Mexico’s constitution, he ruled.Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Oliver and Santa Fe County Clerk Geraldine Salazar “shall comply with and perform” their duty to issue such licences.Malott is a district court judge in the Second Judicial District of New Mexico and was appointed to the bench by former Gov. Bill Richardson.
Oliver and Salazar are “enjoined and restrained from refusing to issue” such licenses.
New Mexico Attorney General Gary King, meanwhile, has told that state’s Supreme Court in a third court challenge that any attempt to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying is unconstitutional.
It was not immediately clear who, if anyone, would appeal either last week’s or Monday’s court rulings. The question is relevant because neither ruling creates a final, definitive ruling about state law — a ruling that only could come from the state’s Supreme Court.
A piece in Slate makes a good case for why we should be taxing churches - all of them. To the list of taxed organizations should be added in my opinion all of the quasi-religious organizations such as NOM, FRC, AFA, etc. , which are nothing more than propaganda organizations for extreme religious beliefs and which actively work against the rights and well being of other citizens. Some might say that churches provide charitable relief to the poor and so forth. If they can document these efforts, give them an exemption for funds actually spent on these endeavors but not on lavish church buildings and activities that do nothing to further the general welfare. Here are highlights from the piece:
Amelia Thomson-Deveaux has a great piece about religious groups that are trying to remove restrictions on church-based electioneering. She suggests that rather than gutting the rules, there's a simple fix, "Religious leaders who want the liberty to endorse candidates can give up their churches’ tax deduction."
I would go one further. Let's tax churches! All of them, in a non-discriminatory way that doesn't consider faith or creed or level of political engagement. There's simply no good reason to be giving large tax subsidies to the Church of Scientology or the Diocese of San Diego or Temple Rodef Shalom in Virginia or the John Wesley African Methodist Episcopal Zion church around the corner from me. Whichever faith you think is the one true faith, it's undeniable that the majority of this church-spending is going to support false doctrines. Under the circumstances, tax subsidies for religion are highly inefficient.What's more, even insofar as tax subsidies do target the true faith they're still a pretty bad idea. The basic problem with subsidized religion is that there's no reason to believe that religion-related expenditures enhance productivity.
Upgrading a church's physical plant doesn't enhance the soul-saving capacity of its clergy. You just get a nicer building or a grander Christmas pageant. There's nothing wrong with that. When I was young I always enjoyed the Grace Church Christmas pageant. But this is just a kind of private entertainment (comparable to spending money on snacks for your book club—and indeed what are Bible study groups but the original book clubs?) that doesn't need an implicit subsidiy.
Meanwhile, nobody thinks churches and other religious institutions should silence themselves on the important issues of the day. On the contrary, discussing moral action is at the heart of many religious enterprises. And much moral action plays itself out in the arena of politics. So trying to say that churches should get subsidy when they don't endorse candidates is de facto a kind of subsidy to religious doctrines whose views happen to lack strong partisan implications. So if your faith says "abortion should be illegal and spending on the poor should be increased and it's too bad neither candidate supports that" you're golden, but if your faith says "abortion should be legal and spending on the poor should be increased so good for Barack Obama" suddenly you're in trouble. That's perverse. Just make everyone pay taxes.
Yes, taxing churches would put some parishes and congregations out of business. But why should I be indirectly subsidizing a religion that hates me or teaches in my opinion false views and lies? Put churches out in the market place and let them compete like every other business - religion is, in truth big business, just look at Pat Robertson and the many sleazy televangelists who fleece people via cable TV on a weekly basis. If their "product" sells, they will survive. If not, then they can end up on the trash heap of history.
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