Women Born Transsexual

From The Seacoast (New Hampshire):     http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20120110-OPINION-201100350

I’ve posted this one before and I’m reposting it in view of the Renault ad.

This is the sort of ad one finds in a decent society as opposed to the Libra Tampon ad which played off negative sexist stereotypes.

Pope Adolf continues his blood libel of LGBT/T people.

Former Hitler Youth spews more homophobic bullshit.

From Pink News UK:   http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/01/10/pope-gay-marriage-threatens-the-future-of-humanity/

by Stephen Gray
January 10, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday that allowing gay couples equal marriage rights could threaten the future of humanity.

The comment formed part of an address to a meeting of 180 diplomats at the Vatican.

According to Reuters, the pontiff said “pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman” when discussing appropriate “settings” for children.

Of straight marriage, he said: “This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society.

“Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/01/10/pope-gay-marriage-threatens-the-future-of-humanity/

From Alternet:   http://www.alternet.org/environment/153717/fracking_on_shaky_ground%3A_how_our_latest_fossil_fuel_addiction_is_linked_to_earthquakes/

When the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio decides to buy earthquake insurance, you know we’ve got a big problem.

By Scott Thill
January 9, 2012

To what should be the surprise of no one, earthquakes caused by the junkie gas sector’s hydraulic fracturing process, known as fracking, have been cropping up like Freud’s repressed. The latest ominously arrived in Republican-dominated Ohio on New Year’s Eve, quickly prompting Youngstown’s mayor to buy earthquake insurance and lament, “You lose your whole house, that’s your life savings, and if you have no money or no insurance to replace it, then what do you do?”

That’s easy, Mayor Charles P. Sammarone, and anyone else finally learning these hard lessons: You stop fracking, which is to say you stop messing with the geological integrity of your cities, and their water tables. If you’re Ohio, then you stop giving GOP industry stooges like Speaker of the House John Boehner and Governor John Kasich access to your precious natural resources. If you’re the rest of the world, you accept that you have a serious problem with fossil fuel consumption, detach your complicity and support, and start planning for a future in which deregulated shale gas extraction, and its frackquake-causing disposal wells, are a desperate cry for psychoanalysis rather than an acceptable peak oil market.

Either that, or you sit back and watch as more unassuming fissures threading through your cities swell into destabilized faults in search of frackquakes, or worse.

“There has always been a scientific link between fracking and earthquakes,” U.S. Geological Survey spokesperson Clarice Ransom told AlterNet. “The question of whether a hydrological injection project can interact with a nearby active fault to trigger an earthquake is still unresolved.”

But not for long, as the fracking industry, emboldened by $750 million in political payouts, continues to tap the planet, stash its toxins, and according to Ransom, create more “tiny earthquakes [normally] too small to be of any concern” yet still “useful to the operators because they provide information about the fracking process.”

That self-fulfilling circularity is bound to generate further predictable data with a simple premise: The purpose of hydraulic fracturing is to destabilize the ground beneath our feet to feed our energy addiction, and it has done its job with fearsome precision. At this point, saying we need more science on the cause of frackquakes is as reassuring as saying we need to cause more frackquakes for the purposes of science.

(This sounds suspiciously like the excuse the Japanese whale murderers use to justify murdering whales.)

Continue reading at:   http://www.alternet.org/environment/153717/fracking_on_shaky_ground%3A_how_our_latest_fossil_fuel_addiction_is_linked_to_earthquakes/

From Right Wing Watch:   http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-laments-%E2%80%98we-have-feminized-public-policy%E2%80%99

by Miranda Blue
January 9, 2012

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer was excited today to read about a Public Library of Science One Journal study that finds distinct differences in personality traits between men and women. Although the study did not explore to what extent those differences are due to nature or nurture, and other researchers are already questioning the results, Fischer took the opportunity to expound on his views on the proper role of women in the public sphere.

Two years ago, Fischer provoked national controversy when he said that the United States had “feminized” the Medal of Honor by granting it to those who who have saved lives, not just those who have killed enemy troops. Today he goes back to the theme, claiming that America is in trouble because we have “feminized public policy”:

If these differences are as profound as this study suggests, could that be the explanation for why God has designed men to be leaders in the home, leaders in the church and leaders in society? And I would suggest that the answer to that question is, “Yes.”

Complete article at:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-laments-%E2%80%98we-have-feminized-public-policy%E2%80%99

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/09/oil-sands-battle-canada

In an open letter defending a controversial project, Canada’s natural resources minister accuses a pipeline’s opponents of colluding with ‘radicals’ and ‘jet-setting celebrities’

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 January 2012

Canada let loose an extraordinary rant against opponents of a controversial project to pump tar sands crude to Pacific Coast ports on Monday, accusing campaigners of colluding with foreign “radicals” and “jet-setting celebrities” to hijack the government.

The diatribe, which came as an open letter from the natural resources minister Joe Oliver, caused a furore in Canada.

It was seen as a sign of the conservative government’s frustration at growing opposition to its efforts to find global markets for its vast reserves of tar sands crude, a type of petroleum deposit found in large quantities in Canada.

Opponents of the project object to over-turning a decades-old moratorium on oil tanker traffic on the British Columbia coastline, running a pipeline through British Columbia’s northern wilderness, and sending jobs out of the country.

But in his open letter, Oliver accused opponents of controversial pipeline projects of destroying Canada’s economy in pursuit of their “radical ideological agenda” by blocking the government’s efforts to find new markets for tar sands crude.

Continue reading at:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/09/oil-sands-battle-canada

Almost every Democratic President’s wife, who has been out spoken rather than the perfect submissive wife of the powerful husband has been criticized from Elanor Roosevelt onward.  Before Michelle Obama they trashed Hillary Clinton.

These women have many things in common.  They are complete, brilliant complex adult women, the equal of their husbands in talent and intellect.

They also speak out about issues that would be of great benefit to the common American working people, of benefit to making our world a better place.

They have minds of their own and use them.

The Obamas have been trashed for taking short vacations at holiday times when Chimpy took months off at a time and spent all sorts of money on publicity stunts like his “Mission Accomplished” act.

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/michelle-obama-attacks_b_1187605.html

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
1/6/12

There are two relentless constants in the manic drive by GOP ultra conservatives, tea party leaders and followers, and unreconstructed bigots to make President Obama a one-term president. One is their drumbeat, non-stop barrage of racist depictions, slurs, and digs at Obama. The other is their drumbeat, non-stop barrage of racist depictions, slurs, and digs at First Lady Michelle Obama. The latest is the outrageously racist depiction of Michelle on the right-wing website Gateway Pundit as a grotesquely muscular armed Marie Antoinette. The racist caricature was based on a 1775 portrait by 18th Century French painter Jean-Baptiste André Gautier d’Agoty. The painting hangs in the Palace of Versailles outside Paris.

The racist comparison of Michelle to Antoinette is another in the endless knocks that Michelle lives an imperious and luxury lifestyle all supposedly at taxpayer expense. This is code language for an African-American that’s “uppity.” And if that African-American happens to be the First Lady, the fury-level soars and the slanders against her fly even hotter and heavier.

The racial assault on Michelle began virtually the instant that Obama declared his presidential candidacy in 2007. The first salvo was an out of context remark in which Michelle allegedly questioned her faith in America. This set off bells and whistles that she might be the perfect surrogate punching bag for then candidate Obama. The Obama campaign sensed the danger and tactfully made sure that Michelle would play the low-key and supportive role in her husband’s candidacy that presidential candidate’s wives traditionally play.

Once in the White House, that quickly changed. She got pilloried for her push of the failed Chicago Olympic bid, and later for uttering a few words on health care reform. Her shopping excursions, her vacation in Spain, and her work-out routine all became fodder for political sniping, gossip and ridicule.

Continue reading at:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/michelle-obama-attacks_b_1187605.html

From RH Reality Check:    http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/09/how-long-will-it-take

by JAC
January 9, 2012

Originally posted to JACBLOG!

How long will it take for women to be free to control their own bodies?  How long will it take before government backs out of bedrooms?  How long will it take before women rise up and fight the assaults on their freedoms?  History and 2011′s increase in reproductive restrictions do not present reassuring answers to these questions.

Despite Abigail Adams’ admonition to her husband to ‘remember the ladies’ as he attended the Constitutional Convention, the rights of women were not laid out during the very founding of our county; thereby not granting them equal parity legally and allowing abuses to occur.   In the 1800s, women began organizing and achieved some minor successes, but no equality either legally or socially.  After years of struggles and a bitter fight for the right to vote, the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.  Three years later the Equal Rights Amendment was proposed. 83 years after its initial introduction, the ERA has yet to be ratified.

Throughout most of the 20th century, women were prisoners of their own biology.  In many cases, they were unable to legally purchase contraception, husbands could force their wives to have sex and it was not considered rape, and women could not obtain safe, legal abortions.  Finally, on January 22, 1973, American women won a major victory with the Roe vs. Wade decision by the Supreme Court.

For those of us who remember the days before Roe vs. Wade, this decision changed the landscape for women.  I can remember hearing sirens on my college campus as young women resorted to coat hangers, stairs, or medication to handle unwanted pregnancies.  I can remember women pooling their funds and going to clinics where doctors performed abortions at night.  I can remember women who lost their ability to have children or who lost their lives to back alley abortions.  Roe vs. Wade offered a life line, freedom to choose.

Continue reading at:    http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/09/how-long-will-it-take

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/09-7

100 Years Since Lawrence Textile Worker Strikes

If we heard as much from the left wing pro-civil rights, anti-racist, anti-capitalist religious figures as we hear from the religious right you would hear less anger from me regarding religious institutions.

It may surprise some of my readers to learn that I am actually Facebook friends with ministers, rabbis and  a priest.  All of whom are either part of the LGBT/T communities or are left wing progressives.

From Truth Dig: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_gospel_of_the_peniless_jobless_marginalized_and_despised_20120109/

By Chris Hedges
Jan 9, 2012

“The Cross and the Lynching Tree are separated by nearly two thousand years,” James Cone writes in his new book, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” “One is the universal symbol of the Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. Despite the obvious similarities between Jesus’ death on the cross and the death of thousands of black men and women strung up to die on a lamppost or tree, relatively few people, apart from the black poets, novelists, and other reality-seeing artists, have explored the symbolic connections. Yet, I believe this is the challenge we must face. What is at stake is the credibility and the promise of the Christian gospel and the hope that we may heal the wounds of racial violence that continue to divide our churches and our society.”

So begins James Cone, perhaps the most important contemporary theologian in America, who has spent a lifetime pointing out the hypocrisy and mendacity of the white church and white-dominated society while lifting up and exalting the voices of the oppressed. He writes out of his experience as an African-American growing up in segregated Arkansas and his close association with the Black Power movement. But what is more important is that he writes out of a deep religious conviction, one I share, that the true power of the Christian gospel is its unambiguous call for liberation from forces of oppression and for a fierce and uncompromising condemnation of all who oppress.

Cone, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, writes on behalf of all those whom the Salvadoran theologian and martyr Ignacio Ellacuría called “the crucified peoples of history.” He writes for the forgotten and abused, the marginalized and the despised. He writes for those who are penniless, jobless, landless and without political or social power. He writes for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and those who are transgender. He writes for undocumented farmworkers toiling in misery in the nation’s agricultural fields. He writes for Muslims who live under the terror of war and empire in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he writes for us. He understands that until white Americans can see the cross and the lynching tree together, “until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black-body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”

“In the deepest sense, I’ve been writing this book all my life,” he said of “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” when we spoke recently. “I put my whole being into it. And did not hold anything back. I didn’t choose to write it. It chose me.

Continue reading at:  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_gospel_of_the_peniless_jobless_marginalized_and_despised_20120109/

These people are incredibly arrogant overly privileged wasters of oxygen who should be removed from their positions, have their wealth confiscated and be sent to work in the deep vein mines for ten years.

Under Mao they called it the Cultural Revolution and had re-education programs in the country where scumbags like this could be handed a shovel and learn what real work is.

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/wall-street-bonuses-2011_n_1193733.html

Jillian Berman
1/9/12

For some on Wall Street, a less-than-stellar bonus is simply too much to bear.

Brokerage executives at one Wall Street firm, Jefferies Group, have threatened to leave the company if their bonuses aren’t up to par with other firms, the New York Post reports. Though some particularly stellar employees may be able to eventually convince their bosses to give them a bigger share of the bonus pie, nervousness surrounding dismal job prospects on Wall Street will likely keep most bankers quiet.

“It’s a terrible time to be an employee,” Robert Ottinger, a New York-based compensation lawyer told the NYP. “Employers know they have all of the power.”

Any Jefferies Group employees that decide to walk will likely have to put their money where their mouth is. As Business Insider notes, company CEO Richard Handler recently said the decision to quit won’t be without any financial penalty.

Nervousness about the global economy, new regulations, slow dealmaking and public anger at banks will likely push banks to slash this year’s bonus pool so much that it will be the smallest since the height of the financial crisis in 2008, the Wall Street Journal reports. At Morgan Stanley, some investment bankers may see their bonuses cut by 30 to 40 percent. And at Goldman Sachs, many of the firm’s partners’ compensation could be halved.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/wall-street-bonuses-2011_n_1193733.html

From Business Insider:  http://www.businessinsider.com/bankers-planning-to-sue-over-bonus-2012-1

Now US Bankers Are Planning To Sue Or Walk If Bonuses Are Too Low

Julia La Roche
Jan. 9, 2012

It’s already happening in the U.K. and now here in the U.S. a growing group of bankers are planning to sue their employers or walk away if they don’t receive bigger bonuses, according to the New York Post.

For example, brokerage execs at Jeffries Group have threatened to walk away from the firm if bonuses aren’t on par with the Street.

However, that could be a bit tricky.

Last month, an internal memo from Jeffries CEO Richard Handler about their year-end bonus essentially stated that if employees leave the firm within the next year, they have to pay Jeffries back the portion of their year-end bonus received in cash.

Meanwhile, other major financial firms are hoarding their bonus pools ahead of anticipated complaints from employees, the Post’s report said.