As most people, I was a little shocked and pretty stoked when I heard that the Susan G. Komen Foundation had reversed its decision to not grant Planned Parenthood future funds due to the political hackery of it's Senior VP, Karen Handel, despite its denial that the decision was politically based. Handel was on the losing side of a election for the Governorship of Georgia and ran on defunding Planned Parenthood. You'd have to be an idiot not to see that this was strictly a political move. If there's any doubt, why did Komen stop funding to institutions which also happened to be research centers for embryonic stem cells and not only looking for a cure for breast cancer?
But while I was initially pleased that they backtracked after the avalanche of shit that they brought upon themselves, I wasn't exactly thrilled about their statement. This particularly comes to mind:
...We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants...
Continue "existing grants"? That was never in question. In fact, when they released their initial defunding statement, they make the claim that the existing grants would be honored, just not new grants. And as far as applying for future grants, why would that be in question if the organization will basically continue what it's currently doing? Why would they be denied future grants?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe it's the pulled funding to other facilities and research centers that also are at odds with the pro-life agenda that has me concerned about the sincerity of this statement. The only thing that would make a difference for me personally, would be if the foundation canned Karen Handel as a gesture of good faith that they really are just looking for a cure since their entire organization now seems to be in question.
Yesterday it was reported that Rick Warren was chosen to give the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. At first I thought it was a joke or a misreporting.
Surely there are better choices than the anti-choice Rick Warren who compared abortion to the Holocaust. There must be a better pick than the anti-gay rights Rick Warren who, athough admitting that divorce is a bigger threat to marriage than gay marriage, still compared it to incest and pedophilia while hiding behind the excuse ofthe "redefinition" of marrige(which is fodder for a completely different post altogether). The man who said that stem-cell research is "non negotiable"for Evangelicals when deciding on their presidential choice couldn't be the guy that Obama chose to speak at his inauguration, could it?
It looks like it is true, and for a moment I felt a little better after reading this:
...the decision to get involved with Saddleback was actually not Obama's. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, run by the House and Senate, put together the program for the swearing-in ceremony. Congress, not Obama, invited Warren...
What the hell is that all about? Great, so Obama doesn't have a choice on who gets to give the invocation at his own inauguration ceremony?
Barack Obama has selected the Rev. Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor and author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, a role that positions Mr. Warren to succeed Billy Graham as the nation’s pre-eminent minister and reflects the generational changes in the evangelical Christian movement.
...Mr. Obama’s inauguration program, for Jan. 20, was announced Wednesday by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Celebrations.
Inauguration programs follow a traditional outline but also allow a president-elect to put his stamp on the proceedings and set the tone for his administration.
The choice of Mr. Warren, pastor of a megachurch in Orange County, Calif., is an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals. Mr. Warren is an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage — litmus-test issues for Christian conservatives. In fact, his selection set off a round of criticism by gay rights groups angered by his support for California’s ban on same-sex marriages.
So did Obama decide on Warren or what is decided for him? Did the "release" of this information precede Obama's knowledge of it in an attempt to corner him into accepting the program? And why haven't we heard a statement from the transition team? Or is the quesiton even being asked - too much Blagojevichin' to worry about Warren, you know.
I have mixed feelings about this. If this is a political game to placate the Religious Right and try to win them over, then it won't work. Even though Obama did get twice the number of votes from young Evangelicals that Kerry received in 2004 he still received about 25% of their vote overall, the same as Kerry. The other issue I fear is the "what have you done for me lately" effect. Sure, the Religious Right will tolerate Obama... for about as long as Warren's invocation lasts. But unless he's going to do a 180 on Pro-Choice and stem-cell research, I don't think he'll gain any new supporters, and he'd certainly lose more than he'd gain.
On the flip side, what does the choice of Warren say about what Obama or the Democratic party thinks of it's Progessive supporters. Right now, they are majorly pissed off about the Warren issue.
"My blood pressure is really high right now," said Rev. Chuck Currie, minister at Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon. "Rick Warren does some really good stuff and there are some areas that I have admired his ability to build bridges between evangelicals and mainline religious and political figures... but he is also very established in the religious right and his position on social issues like gay rights, stem cell research and women's rights are all out of the mainstream and are very much opposed to the progressive agenda that Obama ran on. I think that he is very much the wrong person to put on the stage with the president that day."
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..."Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance,"read a statement from People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert. "He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion."
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..."Let me get right to the point," Joe Solomnese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a harshletter to the president-elect, "Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans."
Does someone get to review what Warren will say in his invocation before the event? Will he insert some unapproved passage and take a shot at the LGBT community? Will he compare Pro-choicers to Hitler? Probably not. But there's always that slim chance...
To those who aren't especially religious (including yours truly), does it really matter? Just because Warren is there doesn't mean Obama is all of a sudden adopting Warren's policy views. And I think we're pretty safe to assume that Obama is still in favor of the separation of church and state. Otherwise, we should just be pissed off that there is an invocation and a benediction to begin with. We should be angry that religious observance is part of the inauguration ceremony at all, shouldn't we? Or is that just a formality and therefore okay?
We take what we want out of the words of these people, don't we? If we are in agreement with them, it is of a secular nature. If we happen to disagree with something, it's based on their religious beliefs and don't pertain to us. Yes, Warren has said some pretty shitty things, but that's not to say he hasn't done any good. And let's not forget that Rev. Joseph Lowery, who was a founding leader of the Civil Rights Movement will be there as well. Does Lowery's benediction cancel out Warren's invocation? Does it supercede it?
And finally, maybe in Barack Obama we really did get someone who is doing what he said he would do.
Apparently, Barack Obama meant what he said about our politics being too small for our problems. ...I don't understand how anyone who listened to Obama during the campaign would be shocked that Obama lets Warren give the invocation. It's vintage Obama. It does not signal agreement with Warren's political positions, some of which are clearly at odds with Obama's. Warren isn't making policy or even giving a sermon. He's saying a prayer and then possibly dancing later at some inaugural parties. If anything, it's the possibility of this dancing that should be deeply troubling to all Americans.
...Rick Warren felt some of this same heat when he invited Barack Obama to speak at his church on World Aids Day. Conservatives railed against Warren for legitimizing Obama. People with different political opinions aren't supposed to come together in anything but a shouting match. ...There's something bigger at play here and you can't say Obama didn't warn you. He talked about reaching out, about expanding our politics and that crazy bastard actually meant it. Nobody on the left or right quite knows what to make of it. We want to cram Obama into our old, divisive, two toned ideological and political frame and if he doesn't fit, we'll attack him too. Attacking is what we're used to doing.
But in the long run this new politics benefits us all. Ironically, it benefits the minorities and marginalized and ill-treated the most. I know this may be hard for many to see right now but the truth is that this sort of symbol is what America needs. Not seeing just Warren on stage or just Lowery but seeing both of them of there at once.
Obama said it in the abstract time and again during the campaign. Now he's showing us. Seeing the things that Pastor Rick Warren and Reverend Joseph Lowery have in common is more important than seeing the things that separate them. America needs to see that. It's a step down the road where a majority of us see the things that straight Americans in love want are the same things that gay Americans in love want, too.
Lee Stranahan is a better man than I. My first instinct is definitely not "do unto others." I think I eventually get there most of the time, and not so quickly. But I do agree with his idea that attacking is what we are used to doing, so maybe we should keep an open mind about things. Case in point, now it seems that the Religious Right is angered over Warren's participation in the inauguration.
So who knows? Maybe he'll back out, although I doubt it. Just as I doubt Obama would change his mind about having him there.
UPDATE (12:20pm): Obama press conference where he is asked about the Warren choice.
If opposing same-sex marriage but being on record for equal rights is homophobic then Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are all homophobic. I can think someone is wrong about gay marriage without calling them a homophobe. Throwing around that word doesn't help and it's generally unprovable.
If it weren't for Dubya the vetoing embryonic stem cell bill and defunding research, scientists would have never been able to reprogram ordinary skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. Confusing, isn't it?
Two groups of scientists in Wisconsin and Japan have found a way to reprogram ordinary skin cells so they behave like embryonic stem cells. So it may become unnecessary to use embryos in this cutting-edge research.
When the good news was announced, the White House had the gall... to claim the victory as its own. “This is very much in accord with the president’s vision from the get-go,” said policy adviser Karl Zinsmeister. Without the slightest hint of irony, he suggested that their stalwart opposition actually fueled the scientists’ success. Next thing you know the president will nominate himself for the Nobel Prize in medicine.
Is that what he was doing when he surrounded himself with all those snowflake babies?
This breakthrough was not the president’s “vision from the get-go” or any other go. First of all, the Bush administration bet on the wrong horse—adult stem cells. Second, the researchers couldn’t have gotten to step two without step one. They needed human embryos to learn how to do this without human embryos. They’ll still need embryos for some time, as both a benchmark and a way to judge whether stem cells from skin are effective and safe.
So let's all thank Dr. Bush, the 21st Century Einstein, as he has delayed stem cell research by at least five years.
"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried... The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party."
Regarding stem cell research, Carmona said he was prevented from talking publicly even about the science underpinning the research to enable the U.S. public to have a better understanding of a complicated issue. He said most of the public debate over the matter has been driven by political, ideological or theological motivations.
"I was blocked at every turn. I was told the decision had already been made -- stand down, don't talk about it."
Do we really expect anything different? It's just another day in the bizarro world of the Bush White House.
“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical,” Mr. Bush said in a brief ceremony in the East Room of the White House. He called the United States “a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred.”
All life is sacred except for Iraqis, isn't that what you mean, George? All life is sacred except the surge of troops you're sending to die in Iraq, right George? George W. Bush is a hypocrite (no news there).
But let's get to the crux of the matter: The "sanctity of life" argument is a smokescreen while this administration slowly shifts federally funded research to the private sector. The pharmaceutical companies are not restricted to experiment with embryonic stem cells and once they start finding cures you can only imagine what the exorbitant cost for the cure to a disease like diabetes or multiple sclerosis will be after the private sector patents its findings as opposed to having it in the public domain. How do you suppose the average American will be able to afford something like this if it stays in the hands of the corporations? The corporations and the extremely wealthy win again.
Chimpy's vetoes are just pre-emptive privatization.
“By January 2009, we will have a president who favors embryonic stem cell research,” Ms. DeGette added, noting that at the moment the leading presidential candidates in both parties support it. Of the three most emotional social issues of the day — abortion rights, same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research — the last is the only one on which the public, by a growing majority, clearly favors the liberal position, said Michael Dimock, a pollster at the Pew Forum on People and the Press.
NEW YORK -- Michael Brecker, a versatile and highly influential tenor saxophonist who won 11 Grammys over a career that spanned more than three decades, died Saturday at age 57. Brecker died in a hospital in New York City of leukemia, according to his longtime friend and manager, Darryl Pitt.
This is very depressing. When I was in college, a friend turned me on to Brecker while he was with Steps Ahead. I was able to go see him play at The Bottom Line in NYC. It was just before the album Steps Ahead: Magnetic was released (probably 1985ish...Yes. Albums. Remember them?). I fell in love with his playing and his experimentation (like the EWI) and went out and tried to buy everything he recorded. I wasn't around for John Coltrane's death, but I can't imagine this feeling any less painful. Michael Brecker was arguably one of the jazz giants of our generation.
His illness silenced his music at times, but raising awareness of bone marrow drives gave him a new focus. "It's something that doesn't come naturally. ... I obviously miss playing and writing music," Brecker told The Associated Press in 2005. "On the other hand, this whole experience has allowed me to be a conduit to attract attention for a cause that's much larger than me ... for people to go get tested (for the marrow donor program) because I know a lot of lives will be saved." Brecker's survivors include his wife, Susan; his children, Jessica and Sam; his brother, Randy; and his sister, Emily Brecker Greenberg. Memorial services are being planned.
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