What We Have Learned About Mitt Romney

by Dee Newman

If there’s one thing we have learned about Mitt Romney over the last year, it is that he does not let facts get in his way. His recent deeply offensive comments claiming that Israelis are culturally superior to Palestinians because they have a higher GDP per capita conveniently ignores some significant facts.

Rather than cultural supremacy, the explanation for the economic disparity is more likely the result of Palestinians having to endure decades of a destructive military occupation and devastating domestic trade restrictions and embargoes by the Israelis. Not to mention, the $3 billion a year Israel receives from the United States government to keep its economy artificially prosperous.

Personally, I do not believe that Romney’s comments were racist. He’s a capitalist – a plutocrat. He fervently believes that his class and wealth makes him superior – somehow better than the rest of us, no matter what ethnicity we may be. To him, wealth determines a person’s worth, not integrity.

Our Story in 2 Minutes

Tennessee Flora and Fauna (Photos)

To the Readers of this Blog

A so-called 'Monsanto rider' was quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013 Agricultural Appropriations bill. It would 'require' the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement is completed.

I urge the readers of this Blog to signed a petition to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Barack Obama, which says:

"Stop the Monsanto riders. Unless a citizen's army of farmers and consumers can stop them, Congress is likely to ram these dangerous riders through any day now."

To sign the petition click here.

Thanks!

From My Friend Leaf

   
The Vegan Chronicles

by Rev. Leaf Saligman

On June 27, 2012, I decided to stop eating dairy products. At the time, I figured I would continue to eat eggs from the bantam hens my friend raises because the hens have a nice life and my friend made sure the roosters she got in her latest batch of chicks were spared any undoing. My friend kept two and found happy homes for the others. I decided though, to stop eating any other foods with eggs listed as ingredients or eggs served in restaurants because I couldn’t be assured the chickens were happy.

I’ve been a vegetarian since my nineteenth birthday—so at the time of this writing thirty-four years. For the last few I have said when people ask, “Are you vegetarian or vegan” that if I lived out my values I would be a vegan but I just love dairy too much. But over the last few months I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with that inconsistency. It formed an incoherence in my intention. I’ve been to dairy farms. I love cows. I know cows must be bred annually in order for milk to be produced. I know male calves on a dairy farm end up being slaughtered for meat. I know baby calves are taken from their mothers and most, though not all, cows express distress at this separation. But somehow, I managed to disconnect myself from all that and focus instead on my delight eating yummy Walpole Creamery ice cream, freshly whipped cream dolloped on bittersweet chocolate pudding, fresh milk in my morning mocha, and the occasional wedge of aged Gouda or sprinkle of freshly grated Parmesan.

But I heard myself preaching in a couple of spring sermons about connection—how every day we are faced with myriad choices, large and small, that either connect us or disconnect us from the ground of being—which is to say, Being. Beingness. The whole of Creation. The web of life. The garment of destiny. On March 18, two women from a neighboring congregation led a worship service on Will Tuttle’s book, World Peace Diet at the church where I minister. At the end of the service I commented to a congregant, “This got me thinking…” The guests gave me a copy of the book and it sat unopened until late June when I was ready to read it.

First though, I stopped by my mother’s apartment. She is an inveterate reader. She had checked out a library book. Melanie Joy’s Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. I sat reading parts of it, gruesome descriptions of what happens inside a slaughterhouse: how hideous it is for the animals and almost as hideous for the humans who labor there. I got so frustrated, thinking how can so many smart caring people I know ignore the reality behind the meat they eat? It’s as if they plug their ears and ululate to block out the sound of truth.

And then I realized they do it exactly the same way I block out everything but images of happy cows grazing in a pasture to justify consuming milk and ice cream and cheese. So I depart my mother’s and go home, check email and find a trailer for the film Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home. I watch the trailer and cruise the Tribe of Heart website, finding my way to a webpage called HumaneMyth.org wherein I read more about the realities of dairy farming and eggs. The wall of denial is showing cracks.

To read Leaf's entire essay click here.

Rev. Leaf Seligman is a Unitarian Universalist minister at the First Parish Church of Fitchburg, MA. Before attending Harvard Divinity School, she taught writing at several universities in New England. After her ordination in 2002 she has served as a chaplain in a hospital, a jail and as a volunteer facilitator for the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) in local prisons. She also continues to teach writing at a college near her home in Troy, New Hampshire. 

In 2011, her collection of her Sabbath meditations, Opening the Window, was published.

Aurora: The Ancient Greek Oddess of the Dawn

by Dee Newman

 

Less than a week ago, our hearts were aching as the dawn was breaking over Aurora, Colorado. With frightening, rapid-fire frequency another gunman wielding an assault weapon forced us all, once again, to face the consequences of our irrational acceptance of inadequately unregulated firearms in our culture.

Today, our attention has move on to another headline.

On December 15, 1791, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was adopted. It read:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Disregarding “a well regulated Militia,” an "arm" in the minds of the Founding Fathers, was a rifle musket or hand gun that fired only one shot; to fire again (as my friend Jack recently pointed out) required another minute of reloading.

Those advocating “gun-rights” need to be honest. Our founding fathers, 221 years ago, could not imagine a fully automatic assault weapon fitted with a drum magazine capable of holding more than a hundred rounds of high caliber ammunition.

Nor could they imagine an individual masked and fitted from head to toe with para-aramid synthetic fiber walking into a multiplex theater armed with a Smith & Wesson M&P .223 semi-automatic rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and a Glock .40-caliber handgun.

As a gun owner who has been licensed by the State of Tennessee to carry a concealed weapon, I am outraged by what “we” have allowed to happen in this country. Nearly fifty people, each and every day, are murder by guns in this country.

The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired on September 13, 2004. Since then, there have been numerous attempts to renew the ban. Unfortunately, no bill has reached the floor of the House or Senate for a vote.

Though we may not be the most violent nation on the face of the earth, we are certainly one of them. We revel in it. We are entertained by it. Yes, we go to the movies to watch it.

Granted, as the NRA says, "guns do not kill; people do." But, when will it dawn on us that a person with an automatic or semi-automatic weapon kills more effectively and efficiently. Certainly, a great deal more proficiently than with a flintlock rifle or hand gun.

From the Huffington Post (John Robbins)

Will the Farm Bill Nullify Laws Against Animal Cruelty?

by John Robbins

In the last few years, California and several other states have enacted legislation to prevent some of the worst abuse of farm animals. But last week Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) successfully introduced an amendment to the farm bill that would not only jeopardize those laws, but also any laws passed by any other state that might seek to restrict factory farm cruelty.

The current Farm Bill expires at the end of September, so Congress has to cobble together a new one in a hurry. King's amendment was introduced near midnight at the very end of a marathon session. It was debated for a grand total of 20 minutes, and then passed by the House Committee on Agriculture.

If the Senate follows suit, it will become law.

Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) President Wayne Pacelle says the measure could nullify "any laws to protect animals, and perhaps... laws to protect the environment, workers, or public safety." The amendment is worded so broadly, he notes, that it could even prevent states from enacting laws that would prevent the sale of food produced by forced labor.

But Congressman King is proud of his amendment because, he says, it "will ensure that radical organizations like the Humane Society of the United States... are prohibited from establishing... restrictive state laws." King doesn't want anyone, particularly anyone associated with animal welfare causes, telling America's farmers how to raise and care for their animals. "My [amendment] language wipes out everything they've done [to ban the most cruel practices] with pork and veal."

King is particularly peeved with California. In 2008, California voters passed a ballot measure requiring that by 2015, no eggs can be sold in the state that come from hens housed in cages so small they can't begin to lift a single wing. The act was a repudiation of the livestock industry's practice of keeping animals in conditions that violate their natures and frustrate almost all of their natural instincts. And this month a state law banning foie gras took effect. "Foie gras" literally means "fatty liver." To produce it, workers ram pipes down male ducks' or geese's throats several times a day, pumping otherwise impossible amounts of fat into the animals' stomachs. Their livers bloat to up to 10 times their normal size, and are then sold as an expensive delicacy.

King doesn't like these kinds of bans. His amendment, called the "Protect Interstate Commerce Act," says that states that object to the way a food product is produced in other states cannot ban the sale of that product.

Paradoxically, King is normally an outspoken proponent of states' rights, so much so that he has expressed strong support for states' rights to ban contraception. Reporter and blogger Zack Beauchamp points out the irony. Congressman King would permit states to ban birth control, but not foie gras.

Perhaps the contradiction can be explained by the fact that King's current bid for re-election depends on the financial backing of agribusiness interests in his state, and these interests are vehemently opposed to California's laws. Bowing to the dictates of industrial agriculture and factory farms, King's home state of Iowa has virtually no restrictions on the conditions that can be imposed on egg-laying hens or other farm animals. This is one of the reasons the state has been responsible for some of the worst outbreaks of salmonella poisoning in U.S. history.

Congressman King's views are often extreme. Last year, he said that providing free birth control to women could make us a "dying civilization." And just in the last few months: He has made headlines by saying there would be no discrimination against gays in the workplace if gays would simply keep their sexual orientation secret. He has compared detention for immigrants to holiday resorts. And he has equated janitors in House office buildings to the East German secret police for installing energy-efficient light-bulbs.

But King's amendment to the Farm Bill isn't just outrageous talk. It's designed not only to block California's animal safety laws, but also to prevent any state from imposing its own animal welfare standards on producers from other states. And it's now part of the Farm Bill that has been approved by the House.

Another Republican Congressman, Abraham Lincoln, once said "I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it." But Steve King takes a different approach.

Neither King nor Lincoln ever graduated from college. But that's about as far as the likeness goes. For unlike Steve King, Abraham Lincoln understood that how we treat animals says something about the kind of human beings we are.

Michelle Alexander Lecture: THE NEW JIM CROW

Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 

The following lecture video is an hour long but a must see:



The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement. Since its publication in 2010, the book has been dubbed the “secular bible of a new social movement” by numerous commentators, including Cornel West, and has led to consciousness-raising efforts in universities, churches, community centers, re-entry centers and prisons nationwide. The New Jim Crow tells a truth our nation has been reluctant to face.

As the United States celebrates its “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of black men in major urban areas are under correctional control or saddled with criminal records for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an extraordinary percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a parallel social universe, denied basic civil and human rights— including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. Today, it is no longer socially permissible to use race explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet as civil rights lawyer-turned-legal scholar Michelle Alexander demonstrates, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways in which it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once labeled a felon, even for a minor drug crime, the old forms of discrimination are suddenly legal again. In her words, “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”

Alexander shows that, by targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.

The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community—and all of us—to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.