Voted in DeKalb Country in the Georgia primary today.
I’d like to wave good bye to Gov. “Let’s castrate the dogs under the Confederate flag” Perdue.
I felt tainted just touching the Diebold machine.
There were only 4 other people voting, one of them my hubby, in a room with about 20 machines.
My friend and colleague Tina Trent has canvassed Democratic candidates running for state office. Feel free her use her questions as a template for your own questioning.
Dear Neighbors in Georgia House Districts 58 and 59 and Senate District 36,
On July 6, I polled all Democratic candidates in these races. I did this because it has been a long time since some of these seats have been contested and also because many new voters have moved into these districts.
I am not involved with any candidate in this race, nor am I representing any organization. Each candidate received a survey by e-mail and a follow-up phone call. Please feel free to contact me about the survey at tinatrent at mailhaven dot com; however, as I promised the candidates, the site itself will contain no content beyond their responses until after the election has ended.
Below you will find the questions I posed to each candidate, followed by the responses I received. Whether or not they completed this survey, I have listed all the Democratic candidates for these races. I encourage everyone to ask questions and participate in the primaries in this important election year.
Go see, get informed, get involved.
The Georgia State Senate has passed two pieces of legislation that pose a serious threat to the separation of church and state.
One would create state-funded Bible classes in Georgia public schools.
The second would allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed by county governments.
Both bills are on Governor Sonny Perdue’s desk, and he is contemplating whether to sign them.
If these were really christians, they would want to post something that better represented Jesus’ teaching. The focus on the ten commandments is symptomatic of their seeming inability to understand love, forgiveness and grace. Neither do they take into account hundreds of years of Jewish and Christian scholarship and debate on issues of interpretation, translation, or socio-historical context. Their “take” on christianity is a perversion of their own religion. Their absolutist views of human beings show little evidence of any of the spiritual virtues. Think I’m overstating? Try Googling “Christian Reconstruction” or “theonomy” – they want a theocracy here, complete with the total control of women, even stoning!
From the Forerunner – I’m not linking to this site – Google a phrase:
We are not looking for a “voice a the table” nor are we seeking “equal time” with the godless promoters of pornography, abortion, safe-sodomy subsidies, socialism, etc. We want them silenced and punished according to God’s Law-Word.
They use God as a tool. Jesus would think they were jerks. This is about votes! This is about scapegoating and turning us against one another so that we don’t notice that we’re all getting robbed. I mean literally robbed – of our traditions, our ideals, our treasury, our natural resources, our futures.
From Apologetics Index:
Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical ”warfare” is the centrality of capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, ”sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, ”unchastity before marriage.”
I can’t believe this. Really. I’m shaking my head. So now they want to get ’em while they’re young – and use our own tax dollars to do it! Already they have uniforms. What next, a special salute?
The separation of church and state protects religious rights, the freedom of religious expression. There should be no state sponsorship of a specific religious tradition. Religious training of minors is the right and responsibility of families and their own religious tradition.
There is no proposal here to teach a wide range of religious texts or religious themes across the world’s traditions. The cuts to more fundamental educational areas serve only to highlight the political motivation of these bills.
Bible classes for minors are an unconstitutional use of funds. At the college level, courses related to religion, such as comparative religion and mythology, spiritual autobiography, Bible as literature, and the like are appropriate as elective courses at state universities. I have been trained in theology and ethics at a state university, and taken courses in religion at the undergraduate level at another. But courses and departments of religion have a different set of approaches than the ones we can expect to see from public school teachers. They started with home schooling, now this. Questions of belief will enter the classroom, and we will see a newly indocrinated “Christian Youth” if they get their way. Wake up, sheeple.
No – you can’t use our tax dollars to indoctrinate our children. No – you can’t fool us, we know what this is all about, and we’re not all as ignorant as you seem to think. Add these totalitarian “religious” power freaks to the neo-cons of empire and the puppets of corporate interests, and you see the unholy trinity that is killing this country and all it stands for! Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, take heed!
It’s a matter of aesthetics. I simply find certain kinds of mouths repulsive. For me, it all has to do with the teeth.
The worst mouth? The one where you have to wonder whether or not there are any teeth at all. The person hardly ever lets you see them. I dislike the bulldog expression – the bottom teeth appear, but the top teeth do not. I dislike very small teeth – they look like corn on the cob.
If you add tension, smirking, and other strange manneristic muscular signals to the secret-teeth, bottom-teeth-only, or corn teeth, then I have a very primal sort of reaction.
It’s a kind of prejudice – it is certainly a preference. Back in the day when I was basically a serial monogamist, all of my boyfriend/lovers had medium-to-large white teeth (not that it matters here, but I am also partial to strong chins and warm expressive eyes). My husband shows his nice white teeth. My whole family has big white gleaming teeth. Maybe it’s a narcissistic tribal affiliation.
Perhaps it is a coincidence, but my Dad lost all his teeth when he was young. I had the most trouble relating with him when his dentures were rather small. Later, when he was older, the dentures were (or at least seemed) bigger, and he smiled more often (and more naturally). We got along better – but that was probably for other reasons altogether. Still – I wonder if this sort of thing could really be a subliminal/unconscious factor i our responses to others?
I don’t care about skin color or language or class or sexuality – but I just don’t like those scary little teeth set in those hard unfeeling mouths. In such a case I may have to admire him (usually it’s a him I mean) in spite of teeth capacity or expressive usage. Someone would have to be so brillant or witty or creative that I would overlook the scary teeth situation, like say… Anthony Hopkins.
I never realized this about myself until now. I know this is a really odd thing. I wonder if I am alone in feeling this way. Having realized this, I’ll have to be more conscious of it in my daily interactions with people. It may be unfair, maybe, may… be.
I like big clean white teeth that show up and make a strong appearance. Americans are known all over the world for our big white honest teeth. Sometimes the teeth may suggest some sort of aggression, like a tiger baring its teeth, but I still prefer that to the scary little teeth. I’m very welcoming to Mormons at the door despite having been a door-to-door cousin Jehovah’s Witness – for some reason they tend to have great teeth (and they are so wonderfully earnest).
Actually I think there are people who prefer the secret teeth, the corn on the cob, show-the-bottom-teeth like a bulldog kind of thing. Maybe they are equally repulsed by people who show their upper teeth. Maybe they are self-conscious about their own teeth. I can’t say that I have the answers on this.
Could there be a political divide – could teeth actually be a factor?
I started having wild thoughts about this. JFK and Jimmy Carter showed teeth. The Clintons have the teeth and so does Kerry. Hollywood people are, of course, big teeth-showers. I’m sometimes undecided about Ahhnold – I like his teeth – but I notice that he doesn’t show them much when he is around the President.
It seems like such a shallow sort of thing, but I wonder if there really are any perceptual differences or other psychological effects across populations based on tooth preferences. I have really gotten to dislike the white male republican kind of mouth. Here’s what I mean.
Nixon had a nice smile:
But is that how we remember him? No, here is the mouth I think of…
Bush is more attractive to me when he shows his teeth.
See? This is nice.
But here is how I see him in my mind’s eye:
It’s probably not a consistent thing. I’m sure there are lots of attractively-toothed Republicans and some scary little-toothed bulldog-underbited Democrats. Condi has a big toothy smile, but that one is a bit terrifying. Zell Miller looked like what he really was, a DINO. Joe Leiberman is borderline – smallish teeth but he shows them sometimes.
Still, here are a few examples of mouths with expressions that I find particularly unattractive.
Cheney
Rumsfeld
Rove
DeLay
Perdue (GA Gov)
Chambliss (GA Sen)
Man O man, show me thy teeth.
Our gas bills for the last two months have caused something like heart palpitations for hubby and me – this on top of budget-busting interest rate increases.
Gas Meter (originally uploaded by chipgrafx)
So I went to look and see…. and here’s what I found. Governor Purdue, our guy – who got into office running on the Confederate Flag, staunch supporter of our Chief Deceiver in the White House.
The retail prices don’t even reflect the wholesale prices. Standard modus operandi of the right. When he was running, he proposed reregulation – now he won’t discuss it.
Georgia rates used to be the third lowest in the nation. When wholesale prices rose, our residential prices rose too. When they went down, our prices still stayed “disproportionally high.”
Are you starting to shiver yet? I am. We have our house at 62 degrees, and our bill was well over $300. Last year it was $92.
“Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.”
— Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King is dead.
A woman of grace and strength and courage and dignity is gone.
Equality. Human Rights. Non-violence. Peace.
She worked hard to keep these ideas out front and center as solid goals for our country. She fought alongside many others for a national holiday in honor of her husband’s birthday. She opened the King Center (Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change-the site of his tomb and of good works to support the dream) here in Atlanta. She spoke out on a wide range of issues (every last one of which is completely disregarded if not actively opposed by the current administration). She raised four children, too – and I hope they can learn to resolve their differences about where their parents’ legacy should take them as a family. The Kings belong to us all.
I am stuck here today with no transportation. I feel a deep urge to go to the King Center. I wish that I could. I am sending out my deep support and caring for everyone in America who feels this emptiness like I do today. The Matriarch King Coretta is gone, another good strong voice gone. May her memory inspire others.
On local news, I heard Rev. Joseph Lowery (former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, among other things). He was asked if he thought there were young people rising up to replace the likes of these heroes of our nation.
He said no. Then he explained in a clear, gentle way (that I can’t duplicate) that no-one can replace King, or anyone. It’s not a matter of replacing. They walked in their own shoes, they had their own history, they thought what they thought, they did what they did.
Young people can’t replace anyone.
They can, however, be inspired and motivated by them – to be fully themselves and find their own work.
I watched film footage of the Kings and others, and the tears rolled down my face. What a woman she was.
They call her “the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.” (note that they don’t use the word “assassinated” much anymore), but she worked strongly for the same goals he did. She didn’t suddenly care about freedom and justice – only just in support of her husband’s memory – but was an strong voice of activism in her own right.
Freedom. Justice.
I don’t remember anytime in my life before when these two words have been so stripped and twisted and misshapen as now. Freedom? Justice? We’ve degraded these words into meaninglessness. I do hope that there are those among the young who will rise up.
I can’t really explain how I felt when I went to CNN and saw the top two headlines:
Coretta Scott King dies
Alito confirmation expected today
The juxtaposition gave me a chill. Today our Senators will show how little they value King’s work – Alito cometh.
I think our dear leader would be wise to keep the hypocrisy to a minimum if he tries to say anything about her death in the State of the Union Speech tonight. His policies haven’t shown much concern for what she stood for and worked for.
I’m going to force myself to watch this speech, although it will be painful. It’s my civic duty.
And I have a feeling about it, which I need to verify or disregard.
Today:
1865: The 13th Amendment to the Constitution passes, abolishing slavery in the United States.
More words from Coretta Scott King:
“If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.”
“My mother always told me that I was going to go to college, even if she didn’t have but one dress to put on.”
“Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won you earn it and win it in every generation.”
“Every person is a child of god and every human being is entitled to full human rights.”
“We have got to stand firm for a more compassionate health care system, which leaves no person behind — a system that takes responsibility to insure that no citizen be denied medical care because they lack adequate insurance. There is something wrong with a system that requires telethons for sick people, but always has a blank check ready for the Pentagon. The Cold War is over, but we still have a Cold War military budget, which is draining needed financial and human resources that should be invested in the health security of the American people. ”
“The gay bashers and homophobic people are the best allies AIDS could have. By preaching hatred and fear of gay people, they are creating a climate that discourages openness and education about AIDS which can help prevent its spread. They spread shame and guilt where their should be compassion and healing.”
“Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder.”
“The King Holiday celebrates Dr. King’s global vision of the world house, a world whose people and nations had triumphed over poverty, racism, war and violence. The holiday celebrates his vision of ecumenical solidarity, his insistence that all faiths had something meaningful to contribute to building the beloved community.”
“Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”
“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
“I think that nonviolence allows you and empowers you to do what is necessary, because what you do is build coalitions. You can’t do all of it by yourself, but you can put together a coalition and get other people involved, or join organizations that are already involved and continue to work to eradicate poverty, of course, since poverty is still with us, very much so. My husband — it was one of the triple evils that he talked about — poverty, racism and war. And of course, they all are forms of violence, and we have to continue to work to make sure that people everywhere have a decent livelihood, that they have jobs, they have housing, they have health care, they have quality education. All of these areas that we still have to work on and to improve, so that the quality of life for all people is improved, and we can achieve indeed the “beloved community” that Martin talked about, that I believe in.”