If we’re not “Dancing With the Stars” or creating new middle-of-the-road singers via “American Idol,” we’re watching people like the Kardashians and Jon and Kate Gosselin splay their pathetic personal lives all over our television screens. I know, “Jon and Kate Plus 8″ is over, but the American people shouldn’t worry! Kate’s on “Dancing With the Stars” now and, even though she’s divorced from Jon, he’s assured the public that she has his support and his vote. Whew! I feel better. As for the Kardashians, their dysfunction will never end. All you need to do is take a look at their Wikipedia entry to know that. And now that we actually know who’s the father of Kourtney’s baby, I thought we’d all just be able to sit back and watch this dysfunctional clan have a hand in raising the child. But no. Because on February 6^th we learned that Kourtney was putting her baby up for sale, saying she’s just not cut out for motherhood. Yeah. Surprise!

Even Bravo, once a network you could depend upon for refuge from this stuff, has succumbed. There you’re treated to gems like the “Real Housewives of NYC” (or Atlanta, New Jersey, Orange County…you name the location), “Miami Social” and “Make Me a Supermodel.” Hell, we even get to watch people on dates with “Millionaire Matchmaker.” Believe me, it’s no wonder that some of these loathsome fools can’t get dates on their own. Personally, I’m waiting for a show called “Make Me a Brain-dead Idiot.” But, then again, we really don’t need that because a pretty significant portion of ‘we the sheeple’ are already there. I have some real news for the sheeple: The garbage they are watching is not reality in any form.

Here’s a dose of reality for the American people:

• Health care in America is a joke and the politicians’ idea of health care reform is an even bigger joke. All of this bi-partisan bunk has derailed the entire operation, and there is no real health care reform without a strong public option. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Without a strong public option, there’s no reason whatsoever for the insurers to change their ways. None. Period. They’re already looking for a rate hike.
• Our president is not even remotely reminiscent of Barack Obama, the candidate, who was going to lead us out of the darkness. In fact, he is eerily reminiscent of our last president. The wars continue on unabated. Guantanamo is still open and you can be sure that torture is still on the bill of fare. He’s now talking about moving some of the terrorist trials out of the American legal system and back into military tribunals. He’s backtracking on transparency in government. The LGBT community is still waiting for some semblance of equality. Need any more reality here? I think not.
• Women are moving backwards at an alarming rate here in America. Don’t buy into the “We’ve come a long way, baby,” myth. Need proof? Our health care providers have no problem paying for Viagra and other male enhancement drugs, but they balk at paying for birth control and abortions. Our health insurers consider both rape and domestic violence pre-existing conditions. And, if that isn’t enough for you, political ideologies like Bart Stupak and John McCain continue to lie about how abortions will be paid for in the new health care scheme simply because they want to legislate morality and have everyone live by their own twisted ideology.
• Here’s another dose of reality for women: There are plenty of our own who are pushing us backwards. Hey, for example, let’s take any of the Kardashian women - Khloe, Kourtney, Kim…they’re all interchangeable. There are women who call working at establishments (if you will) like Hooters and participating in television shows like “Girls Gone Wild” liberating because women are choosing to be sex objects. Are you kidding me? As a woman, I’m not sure that there’s anything that makes me want to vomit more than this head-in-the-sand attitude.
• Here’s the final dose of pathetic reality: We live in a country where we can go out and vote without threat or fear and we consider 61.7% a high voter turnout. This is a disgrace. I really don’t know what else I can say here. The implications can’t be any more clear.

When I talk to people about taking their heads out of the sand, I get comments like, “Well, we need some entertainment and relief from everyday life.” I have a better idea: Get your asses off the sofa and away from what the networks label “reality television,” and go out and take your government back. The reality is that the American public has abdicated control to the politicians. They don’t vote in great numbers. They don’t participate in government. They’ve become “we the sheeple” being led around by the nose. The fact that they don’t consider the real reality alarming is alarming to me. The only thing they’re capable of is whining about the state of the country while they watch their nightly dose of “reality TV.”

Please don’t get me wrong, I do believe that the LGBT community (of which I’m a proud member, by the way) should be incensed at this stage of the game. Barack Obama The Candidate made a lot of promises to our community, and he has pretty much spent the whole first year of his administration pushing the myth that “the time isn’t right.” Let’s face it, when it comes to fighting for civil rights the time is never right. The fact is that it’s just time to do the right thing in these instances, but it has been a very long time since politicians were concerned with doing the right thing. What they are most concerned with is doing what is politically expedient. We know that 2010 is mid-term election time and, frankly, the Democrats have to be very concerned with the political landscape before them. We also know that Obama will be running for re-election in 2012. In American politics, that presidential re-election process actually begins in 2010, as absurd as that sounds. What, then, are the chances of any LGBT legislation becoming a priority? My vote is “slim and none.” I could be wrong and will happily admit to being wrong if something is achieved in 2010. The lackluster performance of the present administration and the Congress aside, there is also some blame to be handed out to the gay community for the failure.

First, let’s talk about some of the civil rights organizations, such as HRC, that have criticized the LGBT community for getting out on the streets and protesting. Are you kidding me? Let’s talk here. The HRC, along with every other LGBT rights organization, has been lobbying the inhabitants of Capitol Hill for years on these issues to no avail. It is a basic right of the American people to assemble and protest, and nothing meaningful has ever been achieved without that component. Let’s take a look at what it took for the black population to gain some semblance of equality in this country. Did Martin Luther King have the ear of the politicians? He certainly did, but he didn’t stop there. He understood the importance of civil disobedience. He marched. He got himself arrested. He took a shoulder-to-shoulder public stand with those he represented. The NAACP never criticized their members for marching. They “got it.” Somehow, the LGBT organizations seem to think that lobbying and PAC money are the only ways to get things done, and that’s a statement about just how corrupt our system actually is. Rather than leveling criticism, organizations from the HRC and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), should be encouraging the gay community to go public, to get out and be proud and to be visible…which brings me to my final complaint.

I’m talking ’bout all of my closeted brethren, now. It’s fine to email our Senators and Congressmen. It’s fine to donate money to LGBT civil rights organizations. However, remaining closeted is not okay. Closeted = invisibility. That does nothing for the cause. What it does do is lend legitimacy to the bigots. If the gay community isn’t out and proud, what does that say? It says that each person who remains closeted - whether at home, at work, or in public - is ashamed of what he or she is. It is saying, every day, that equality is not deserved. Now, some of these people love to invoke the “it’s my personal life and I have a right to my privacy” bullshit. You know, that’s just cowardice. None of us who are “out and proud” are asking those who aren’t to wear sandwich boards proclaiming their sexual orientation or tattoo “I’m gay” on their foreheads. We’re not asking them to make love to their significant others in the middle of the street. What we are asking them to do is to stop denying who and what they are in their everyday lives. Something as simple as holding hands in public, or choosing not to invent non-existent boyfriends and/or girlfriends and admitting who we truly are, can make a huge difference. Is it a risk? Certainly. Nothing on this planet was ever achieved without some element of risk. Whatever happened to courage?

There are some who have exhibited an extraordinary amount of courage, particularly in light of their professions. Let’s take, for example, Dan Choi, a graduate of West Point who served as an infantry officer in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. He chose to stop hiding and came out on the Rachel Maddow Show in 2009, openly challenging the military’s DA/DT policy. Years before Choi, there was Margarethe Cammermeyer, a former colonel in the Washington National Guard, who put a twenty-year career on the line in order to serve openly. To her credit, Cammermeyer never gave up. She filed and won a lawsuit against her discharge, and was allowed to openly serve until her retirement. In the entertainment world, people like Melissa Etheridge and Ellen Degeneres have stood up and made a difference. These public figures should be an inspiration to the closeted - both public and private.

The reality is that - for the everyday person - it’s so much less risky now than it was when my friends and I came out. Did we take some heat? Actually, back in the early seventies we took a lot of heat. Did we lose some friends? Speaking for myself, I did. However, the fact is that those who chose to walk away were never friends to begin with. Being forced to choose between who I am and who everyone wanted me to be was a no brainer for me. It was a compromise I wasn’t willing to make. Today, public support for LGBT equality - from same-sex marriage to openly serving in the military - is high. It is our politicians who are woefully lagging behind. Coming out is less risky. All you closeted folk will find that coming out isn’t as big an issue for your heterosexual friends and co-workers as it is for you. In fact, one of my friends who recently came out told me in was a “non issue” and he was actually ashamed and embarrassed he did not do it sooner. He also told me he had not fooled anybody, but that’s a different post for a different day.

The message here? Come out, come out wherever you are. And take it to the streets.

On Wednesday evening, Obama will give his first State of the Union address. He’s planning on focusing on the economy and health care. I addressed both of these in “Disaster in Massachusetts,” so I won’t rehash them here. But I do have a couple of additional comments on health care. I’m getting letters from these supposed progressive organizations telling us how to go about getting the present health care bill passed. This bill should never pass. It’s a joke. Any time you allow the health care industry to write a bill and any time your president cuts deals with big pharma on the prescription portion of the bill, you can bet your bottom dollar (and I do mean just that) that there is no real health care reform going down. While there may be a couple of checks and balances, the fact is that the bill forces people to purchase health care under penalty of punishment (something that the POTUS was against as candidate Obama), and does not include that “robust public option” that he was so in favor of back before he was elected. Lack of a public option means that the insurance companies still do not have competition, so their performance doesn’t have to improve.

I’m with Dennis Kucinich on this. There’s nothing progressive about this bill. It’s a bad bill and it should not pass. The Democrats should go back to the drawing board, tell the insurance companies that their input is not needed, forget about getting GOP buy-in, put in the robust public option that the majority of Americans want, and pass real health care reform instead of this sham that’s winding it’s way through Capitol Hill. While there are some that think any change is better than no change, they should think again. We’ll be stuck with a dog for a long time because nobody will touch health care again for years.

Oh, by the way, President Obama…

There are a couple of other issues that the POTUS has allowed to fall by the wayside. I’m sure he won’t address these in the State of the Union speech, so let’s address them here. Between February and May of 2009, several polls were conducted that indicated that the American people wanted the Bush administration investigated for torture and violation of human rights. Never let it be said that the POTUS doesn’t protect his own. He flat out refused to allow it. In reality, however, it didn’t even matter that the American people wanted it. There are clear indications that the Bush administration violated both U.S. and international laws when it comes to detention and torture. That alone is a mandate to investigate and punish if violations were found. When it comes to blowing smoke about human rights, the United States has no problem criticizing the likes of Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Amadinejhad. Hell, according to Junior, one of the reasons we invaded Iraq was to save its inhabitants from that marauding human rights violator named Saddam Hussein! Remember when Dick Cheney said that we would be welcomed with open arms? The problem is that we don’t walk the walk. We’re just cheap talk.

Unless we are willing to hold our own leaders accountable, I think it would behoove us to keep our mouths closed when it comes to criticizing other nations on human rights issues. To be vocal is the height of hypocrisy.

In spite of what others may tell you, the majority of the American people want to see the LGBT community given equal rights. The American people are socially light years ahead of where our political leaders are. While the POTUS talked about the repeal of the absurd Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the overturning of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DA/DT), and the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) while he was candidate Obama, he has been positively wimpy when it comes to taking action. According to President Obama, 2010 will be the “right time.” Or not. With the Democrats running scared do you think they’ll even touch the topic of LGBT civil rights? There may be an outside chance if the Democrats maintain their majority (which is in deep question right now). If the Dems don’t maintain their majority, LGBT civil rights will go nowhere with a GOP majority.

The defense of marriage act is clearly discriminatory. The United States basically passed a law that allowed marriage discrimination against one group of people. Yet, in spite of the fact that the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act was a topic on the campaign trail, the Obama administration actually defended DOMA when it was challenged in court after his election. There was simply no need to do this. The Obama administration could simply have let the challenge wind it’s way through the system. If that wasn’t bad enough, the brief written in defense of DOMA invoked both incest and pedophilia. Is it any wonder that President Obama has lost the support of much of the LGBT community?

Then, we have Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the absurd notion that you cannot effectively serve your country if you’re gay. Gay people have been serving in the military for years now. The LGBT community just wants to be able to serve openly without discrimination. More than 13,500 service members have been removed from military service since DA/DT went into effect in 1994, many of them Arab linguists. Does this make sense considering that we are fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan? You know, the notion that we are fighting two wars and we should just leave well enough alone doesn’t hold water. Harry Truman went ahead and desegregated the military in the late 1940s in spite of the fact that the military brass didn’t want to deal with the ramifications. It was the right thing to do. As Matthew Yglesias points out, there will never be a convenient day for military leaders to step up to the challenges of having gay and straight soldiers serving side by side. Hell, we’ve been at this since Bill Clinton’s first term. What we have is an administration that is clearly against DA/DT, but simply doesn’t feel like doing anything about it because it will piss off the military brass. In many ways, that’s worse than being in favor of this misguided piece of garbage.

But the failure of the Democratic majority to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, is the most cowardly of all. This is pretty much a no-brainer. In 29 states, it’s still perfectly legal for a company to fire an employee simply because of his or her sexual orientation. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think firing someone should be tied to job performance, not whom an employee may or may not be sharing a bedroom with. Yet the Democrats simply cannot seem to locate their cohones on this one either. They’ve decided to put this off until 2010 as well. ENDA has been bouncing around DC since 1994. It is now more than 15 years since I worked as a volunteer for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and got my former corporation to sign on in support of the bill, and it still hasn’t passed. What’s the hold up this time? Well, back in the nineties, nobody could utter the word “homosexual” without choking. Now, try getting a politician to say the word “transgendered.” We’re trying to protect transgendered Americans in ENDA now, as well we should, and there’s yet a new stigma to get stuck on. It’s really disgraceful and embarrassing that in this day and age we should even be discussing such an issue.

And the disappointments don’t stop here. There’s the issue of transparency. Again, President Obama has failed to live up to his campaign pledge on this topic. There’s the promise that we’d do business differently in Washington by eliminating special interests. This hasn’t happened. Just take a look at the mess that health care reform is in. In fact, it’s hard now to distinguish the Democrats from the GOP when it comes to big money special interests. Ending the war? We’re not even close in Iraq, and we’ve escalated in Afghanistan. I know, we’re supposed to call it a “surge.” Let’s call it what it is: Escalation. And the president’s use of drones has certainly contributed to civilian deaths in Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, in Yemen and Somalia. We’re going nowhere on climate change simply because we continue to dance with the oil and coal companies. The Democrats’ failure to deliver the change mandated by the American people is palpable and they’d better wake up before the mid-term elections roll around.

I call this article “Disaster in Massachusetts” but, in reality, the loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to the GOP is a disaster for the nation as a whole. For 47 years, the seat was held by a man who truly believed in and fought for liberty and justice for all. He was also a man who took very good care of his state. Today, that seat is held by Scott Brown, an anti-choice, anti-equality corporate tax-cutting puppet. I have to tell you that I find it almost unbelievable. Almost, but not quite. The loss of this critical Senate seat wasn’t merely because Martha Coakley ran a bad campaign. That’s just a piss poor excuse and it lets too many people off the hook. The seat was lost because the Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, have failed to heed the call.

Does anybody remember the mood during the 2008 elections? Does anybody remember how Barack Obama absolutely crushed John McCain? The fact is that it wasn’t even close. This was one election where there was absolutely a mandate for serious change. Not only did Obama crush McCain, but the Democrats were gloriously returned to power. We were led to believe that Obama has his hand on the pulse of the American people. He knew they were serious and that he had to do something fast in two critical areas: The economy and health care. Both have been blown opportunities for his administration and for the Democrats. Martha Coakley may not have been the best campaigner in history, but she had a lot of help losing this baby.

Blown opportunity no. 1: The Economy

Let’s talk economy first. Wall Street, of course, got taken care of first. Did we expect anything less? Not only did it get taken care of ahead of the American people, but Barack Obama managed to put Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers in charge of this portion of the program. Millions of dollars in taxpayer money went out the door with no accountability in place. That’s because it was like putting the foxes in charge of the hen house. These two greedmeisters laid the groundwork for the global financial crisis in their previous lives when they fought off regulation of the derivatives market. Not only was this a huge conflict of interest but, under Obama’s watch, failed institutions continued to pay huge bonuses out of the bail out money to the executives who destroyed their companies. This was the first sign that we were not going to get change we can believe in.

As for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the people’s stimulus package, it was a pittance compared to what Wall Street received. The result is what has been called a jobless recovery. Just what the hell is a jobless recovery? I can give you a pretty good analogy. It’s like being a gay Republican. It’s an oxymoron, people. If Americans aren’t working, they aren’t making money. If they aren’t making money, they can’t spend money. There is no recovery.

Blown opportunity no. 2: Health Care Reform

The performance of the POTUS and the Democratic majority on the health care reform front hasn’t been much better. In fact, it has been pretty dismal overall. When the heat got turned up, Barack Obama disappeared. He hid in his bunker so he wouldn’t have to take sides, particularly when the public option was taken out of the bill. Then, he resurfaced to say that he didn’t campaign on the public option. Unfortunately for President Obama, the election wasn’t that long ago and we found the tape. So, now not only was Obama not much of a leader, but he was also seemingly a liar. He looked suspiciously like his predecessor. Remember him? The American people are in no mood for that. The reality is that, without the public option, there is no health care reform. What we have is a bill that winds up being a nice package for the insurance companies because there’s no competition and, therefore, no need to improve their performance. To coin a phrase from the Talking Heads, “Same as it ever was.”

Oh, yeah, I forgot one more little thing about the whole Democratic health care effort. It’s this guy named Jonathan Gruber. While the White House, the Senate and the DNC promoted Gruber’s work as independent confirmation of their health care proposals, we found out that Gruber was actually a paid consultant to the White House. In fact, he was paid $392,600, and was funded by the taxpayers. Of course, the pressure was put on Gruber because he didn’t disclose that he was being paid. However, the reality is that nobody on Capitol Hill and the White House disclosed this information either. The buck, my friends, should stop there. Remember how Obama was going to change how the government did business? So much for that! If you look at Jane Hamsher’s analysis of how this paid-for information was foisted onto the public as independent corroboration, it looks like a giant cluster…well, you know what I mean. I can’t use the word here but, frankly, I can’t think of a better one either.

What we have here is a pitiful health care plan that really doesn’t much benefit the American people. It certainly isn’t what the American people want, let’s put it that way. We already know that a majority of the American people want the public option, but we’re not getting it. We’re not getting it, in part, because the politicians are afraid it will cost too much money. However, the same politicians don’t have a problem spending another $30 billion or so to ramp up the war in Afghanistan. Reality check: Cost is only one part of the problem. The other part is that the insurance companies do not want competition. They like the way things are right now. They should feel pretty darned good today because the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts might just kill what little health care reform there is on the horizon. That pretty much wipes out the 60^th vote needed to enact the measure.

So, here we are in Massachusetts today, some of us in disbelief. The smarter residents know full well that it wasn’t simply Martha Coakley running a bad campaign. They also know that Evan Bayh is full of hot air when he says that it was the fact that the Coakley was too far to the left. Are you kidding me? Could anyone possibly be more liberal than the Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy himself? He managed to hold that seat for 47 years! The fact is that the Democrats failed to make enough of the real changes that the American people wanted. And boneheads like Evan Bayh - the “Conservadems” or “Centrists” or whatever other term you can call them (I’ve got a good one but I can’t use it here) - helped impede that progress by siding with the GOP, the party that everyone wanted out of power back in 2008.

I predict that this is just the beginning of the punishment that the American public will dole out come 2010. If this seat can be lost, can you imagine the losses the Democrats can expect when the mid-term elections roll around? In the immortal words of Bette Davis in All About Eve, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!”

And let’s take a look at that whole scenario from a practical perspective. There’s always a second party to a pregnancy, generally speaking, the man. It’s amazing how commentary across the blogosphere has focused on women taking responsibility for their sexual activity, but rarely does the male have to worry about taking such responsibility. That is largely because it is acceptable for men to engage in either pre-marital or extra-marital sex, but it is still not acceptable for women. Contrary to popular opinion, we’ve not come a long way, baby.

The whole point of health care reform was to address inequality in the system, not create inequality in a new system. Yet, promoting inequality is exactly what Stupak-Pitts does. While Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich) insists that his amendment is designed to ensure that the Hyde Amendment - which prevents public funding of abortion - is carried over into health care reform, the fact is that Stupak-Pitts is legislation that will unequivocally roll back abortion rights in this country. And let there be no question about it: Abortion is indeed a legal medical procedure, guaranteed by the Roe v. Wade decision. According to NARAL Pro-choice America, less than 13% of all abortions in 2001 were directly billed to private insurance. Frankly, it would make no business sense for any insurer to set up a plan to accommodate so few customers.

The architects of this amendment are Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich), a Catholic former state trooper and resident of the C Street facility in Washington, described in the book “The Family” by Jeff Sharlett. These theocrats encompass both Democrats and Republicans, and promote government “let by Christ’s will alone.” His partner in crime is Pennsylvanian Republican Joe Pitts, last year’s speaker at C Street’s prayer breakfast where he called for a “God-led government.” Pitts, an evangelical, has worked in the anti-abortion trenches for nearly three decades. He rarely attaches his name to any legislation, preferring to operate in stealth mode.

Stupak-Pitts was given a boost not only by evangelicals, but also by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), who opposed health care reform unless curbs were placed on abortion rights. It’s amazing how quickly USCCB jumped at the opportunity to compromise women’s rights, given the fact that they spent decades covering up for pedophile priests. When all is said and done, there’s something inherently evil in the Catholic Church’s participation. The USCCB has also funded anti-gay marriage initiatives in California and Maine, pushed abstinence as part of global HIV policy, opposing the use of condoms and putting millions of lives in danger. The USCCB has also stated that Democrats who do not oppose abortion be denied communion and be purged from the Catholic church. One has to wonder why the Catholic Church’s no-tax status has not been investigated and revoked as a result of this activity.

It appears that society as a whole has gone back to the Dark Ages. On November 18, the Catholic Church issued a pastoral letter listing contraception, same-sex unions, divorce and cohabitation as threats to the traditional family. Think about it: Contraception? This, in conjunction with Stupak-Pitts, is tantamount to making women the property of their husbands. It is stronger than a Roberts-led Supreme Court challenge to Roe v. Wade. A return to measuring a woman’s value only in terms of what she means to a man, as well as enforced motherhood, should be viewed as an outrage.

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security because curbs on abortion availability is not an issue covered in the mainstream media as the Senate begins it’s three-week debate on health care reform. The same zealots will be pressing the issue in the Senate. Stupak-Pitts must not be a part of the final health care reform bill.

Last week, Joe Lieberman may have put the nail in the coffin of the public option, a public option that had already pretty much been watered down by allowing the states to “opt out” of the plan. If we leave it up to Lieberman, there won’t even be an up or down vote on health care reform. He has decided to join the GOP filibuster. Here is Lieberman’s twisted logic:

“We’re trying to do too much at once. To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”

Hell no, Joe doesn’t need health care reform. Not only is his health care (the best you can get, by the way) paid for by the American taxpayers and is granted to him for life, but he has taken $2,395,369 from the health care industry and $1,033,402 from the insurance industry over the course of his career. He sure doesn’t need health care reform. In fact, that wouldn’t work out for him. Joe LIEberman also says that there is no support for the public option. That’s not a case of being wrong. That’s an outright lie. Recent polls show strong support for the public option, and surprisingly strong support among Independents.

Let’s take a look at Joe LIEberman’s comments in detail. The notion that any of these slugs we elected are trying to do “too much at once” is laughable. God forbid they do their jobs. It seems they’ve forgotten that the American public voted for change. They wanted things to happen. Americans were sick of the status quo. Now, we have a potential health care plan that requires Americans to get coverage without giving them any real options. Joe LIEberman is the status quo. There’s no getting away from that. Let’s not forget that Connecticut is the insurance capital of the nation and that Joe LIEberman is protecting his interests. Max Bacchus and the POTUS may run ahead of LIEberman in donations from the health care and insurance industries, but not by a hell of a lot. This guy is scum in a suit, and he’s proud of it.

Now, let’s address the dismal state of the economy and the national debt. All of a sudden, it seems that LIEberman and his GOP counterparts are concerned about fiscal responsibility. Funny, isn’t it? They’ve not given a damn for the longest time. They’ve voted to continue to fund these two useless, pointless and immoral wars to the tune of $12 billion per month. Think about that. While we’re at it, let’s also take a look at the Wall Street bail out. We’ve had a lot of cheap talk on that one, but the fact is that the taxpayers have given these money grabbers billions of dollars in bail-out funds and they continue to get their huge salaries and perks. Now, can we seriously point to health care reform as a danger to the national debt? Can we seriously point to health care reform as something that will burden the taxpayers? Actually, real health care reform would help the taxpayers. Of course, you have to understand that I’m not talking about the top 1% of Americans, who have amassed more wealth (on the backs of the middle class) than the rest of the nation combined. I’m talking about real taxpayers.

How can we improve national debt and enact health care reform so that all Americans are covered? Let’s try this: End these two money-sucking wars and stop giving Wall Street billions of dollars without regulating this playground run amok. Let’s also kill the idea about bailing out GM a third time; they haven’t earned that level of confidence. Then, let’s go back to taxing the wealthy more than everyone else. You know, the graduated income tax that existed before George W. Bush took office. While the rich scream that it is unfair, the fact is that it has always been that way, even during the Reagan era. If we do all of this, we should be able to comfortably enact real health care reform, not this sham that the beltway boys and girls are proposing. The health care reform that is being championed by the Joltin’ Joe, the GOP and the Blue Dog Dems is basically no health care reform at all. It ensures that the insurance companies never have to improve their performance, and that they retain their gluttonous profitability.

It’s tough to figure out what Senator LIEberman could do for an encore, but he has managed to let us know. He announced that he will probably support and campaign for several GOP candidates in the 2010 mid-term elections. Now, it’s true that Senator LIEberman is indeed an Independent. However, any power that he has in the Senate has been given him by the Democratic party, not by the GOP. The Democrats continue to shoot themselves in the head by showing faith in a man who has done nothing but sell them up the river since before the last election. In spite of this, only one Democratic senator has had the courage to open his mouth about LIEberman’s behavior, and that’s Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA). Everyone else has remained silent. You’ve got to wonder what it will take to wake up this Rip Van Winkel majority before it is too late.

I thought I’d just about seen everything, and then came this morning. Actually, some of this happened yesterday but it took a day or so for my tired brain to absorb it all. Is this a Saturday morning rant? In the immortal words of that now infamous former vice presidential candidate, Facebook aficionado, and current financial guru, “You betcha.”

Health care reform

The first thing that pissed me off, of course, is this whole health care reform discussion. Apparently, the issue has moved from inclusion of the public option to how we’re going to afford health care reform. In my mind, this is a non-issue. Does anyone ask the question about how we’re going to continue to afford the bloated defense budget, or the two illegal, immoral wars we are waging in Iraq and Afghanistan? The 2010 proposed defense budget is $663 billion. The present cost of the Iraq war is $9 billion/month, while the cost of whatever is going on in Afghanistan is an additional $2 billion/month. However, because of Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama’s influx of 17,000 additional troops into Afghanistan this past March, it is expected that the cost of that conflict will increase 60% by year’s end. I’ve not heard anyone ask how the United States can continue to afford these wars. Yet, in order to protect the profitability of the insurance companies, various conservative political zombies - both Republican and Democrat - have now decided to make the cost of health care reform an issue in order to prevent it from happening.

How is it that the United States, with all its wealth, remain the only industrialized nation that does not offer universal health care to its citizens? Simple. The insurance industry has given millions of dollars to politicians on both sides of the aisle. The leading recipient of this cash influx is, in fact, Barack Obama. Second in line is Max Baucus. Both are Democrats. One is the President of the United States.

The Nobel Peace Prize

Now that I’ve mentioned it, let’s talk about the Nobel Peace Prize and its recipient, Barack Obama. Apparently the committee feels he belongs in the company of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi and Professor Elie Wiesel. He supposedly won the award for calling for a reduction in the world’s supply of nuclear armaments. Barack Obama took office on January 20. The names had to be put into nomination by February 1, long before the call for this initiative began. There’s no justification for the POTUS winning this award, and he should turn the award down and say that there are others who are much more deserving of it. Calling for a global initiative to reduce the world’s supply of nuclear armaments and actually doing something about it are two different things. The United States owns the largest cache of nuclear weapons in the world. It’s not that I think the call for a nuclear-free world is trivial, because I believe it is essential for our survival. It’s just that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given based on a body of work, not a mere statement. Let’s also not forget that Barack Obama continues to fight two illegal wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and has conducted bombing raids in both Pakistan and Somalia. He has also done everything in his power to prevent the investigation of war crimes and torture under the Bush administration. Now, let’s talk about the 1991 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Inspired by both Mahatma Gandhi and Buddhist concepts, Aung San Suu Kyi has been a tireless fighter for democracy in Burma since 1988, and has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest. Suu Kyi was first arrested in 1989, and offered freedom if she left the country. She refused. In 1990, the National League for Democracy, of which Suu Kyi is the general secretary, won 82% of the vote. As the party’s candidate, Suu Kyi should have assumed the position of Prime Minister. Instead, the election results were nullified, the military refused to hand over power, and she was again detained. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and Suu Kyi used the $1.3 million award to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people. In Suu Kyi’s case, she had already put her money where her mouth is, as we say. She had already shown courage and leadership. It’s not that I don’t think that Barack Obama doesn’t have the potential to be a great or influential world leader. It’s just that I haven’t seen any evidence of it nine months into his presidency on any front. Even if we go back further than his presidency, let’s accept the fact that Barack Obama was a first-term Senator without many accomplishments under his belt. Basing the award on potential, rather than accomplishments, trivializes the process.

All is not okay in OK

Seems the state of Oklahoma has come up with a new idea designed to prevent women from getting abortions. Hell, if you can’t challenge them in court, you might as well try intimidation. Under a new law that will take effect on November 1, physicians will be required to collect detailed personal information from every woman getting an abortion. There are 37 questions, including:

Date and location of the abortion

Race of the mother

Marital status of the mother

Total number of previous pregnancies (including details about live births, miscarriages and induced abortions)

Education level

The reason for the abortion

The method of payment

Whether or not the woman was a state employee at the time of the abortion

The physician must then send the completed questionnaire to the State Health Department, which will create a report to be posted on line. Doctors who fail to submit the questionnaires will face criminal sanctions and loss of their medical license. Keri Parks, director of external affairs at Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma, says, “They’re really just trying to frighten women out of having abortions.”

This whole process is sick, twisted and scary. The Center for Reproductive Rights has joined with former state representative Wanda Jo Stapleton (D-OK City) and Shawnee, OK, resident Lora Joyce Davis in legal action to prevent the law from going into effect. Let’s hope they win.

It’s hard to pinpoint the most misguided piece of legislation to come out of Washington over the past 15 years, particularly in light of the twisted logic of the Bush administration. From my perspective, however, I’d have to choose the absurd Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA). In the thirteen years this law has been in effect, it has done little - if anything - to improve the state of heterosexual marriage. In fact, it isn’t about protecting the sanctity of marriage. It’s about oppressing one group of people, the LGBT community.

In effect, what DOMA does is allow the federal government to define marriage as a legal union exclusively between one man and one woman. No gays. No barnyard animals. Now, I was under the impression that the federal government was involved in the affairs of state, not affairs of the heart. This bill was introduced in the Senate by none other than Bob Barr (married three times, by the way), and passed as part of serial cheater Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America (or the Contract on America, depending upon how you look at it). It was signed into law on September 21, 1996 by none other than William Jefferson Clinton, turncoat. About two years after signing DOMA into law, Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky exploded throughout Washington, eventually leading to his impeachment. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t really care about Bob Barr’s inability to get it right personally. I don’t care about Newt Gingrich’s cheating ways, nor do I believe that Bill Clinton should ever have been impeached. Their sexual pursuits are their personal business. What really pisses me off is the hypocrisy of it all. These three clowns have no business protecting marriage from anybody or anything. In fact, it would seem to me that marriage needs to be protected from them.

Here we are in 2009, thirteen years after the passage of DOMA, and the GOP is completely owned by extreme right-wing Christian conservatives who insist on erasing the line between church and state. The passage of DOMA was the beginning of that unholy alliance. DOMA is less about protecting the sanctity of marriage than it is about blatant discrimination and bigotry. Jason Bartlett of the National Black Justice Coalition says, “DOMA is an egregious piece of legislation as it codifies discrimination into federal law.” In addition to allowing the federal government to define marriage, it also allows the government to deny legally-married, same-sex couples more than 1,100 federal protections, including Social Security benefits, immigration benefits, family medical leave, and hospital visitation rights. This absurd legislation is courtesy of the political party that insists it doesn’t believe in big, intrusive government. Frankly, it’s hard to reconcile this piece of legislation with that political position.

The time has come to dump DOMA and all it stands for

DOMA’s critics rightfully argue that it is unconstitutional on several grounds, including:

• it exceeds congressional authority in violation of the Tenth Amendment.
• Congress over-reach its authority under the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
• The law illegally discriminates and violates the Equal Protection Clause.
• DOMA violates the fundamental right to marriage under the due process clause.

Recently, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, along with Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Jarred Polis (D-CO), introduced the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), which seeks to repeal both sections 2 and 3 of DOMA. The Respect for Marriage Act would eliminate the exception to the full faith and credit clause for married couples created under section 2 of DOMA. However, RFMA would leave it to the states to decide whether or not to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples from other states. Section 3 of DOMA arbitrarily denies same-sex couples the more than 1,100 federal benefits granted to heterosexual married couples. RFMA would require that the federal government treat all married couples equally.

It is time to dump DOMA and the bigotry that lies at its core. Members of the LGBT community pay taxes, go to work every day, take care of their families, struggle with finances and raise children. They are entitled to equal protection under the law.