(I’ll be at the Debbie Cook event in San Pedro – should be a lot of fun and a great way to brand Democrats as the party of service. – promoted by David Dayen)
Across the country — and in both northern and southern California — hundreds of Democratic volunteers will put their values into action during our day of service on Saturday, September 6th — cleaning up neighborhoods and parks, supporting public schools, feeding the hungry. Will you join us?
Just click on the links to see all of the details and sign up for an event in California this Saturday:
The University of California (UC) has managed the two oldest and largest nuclear weapons labs since their creation nearly 60 years ago. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have been at the forefront of the research and design of all nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. University employees even created the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the last five years, the UC has partnered with such multi-national corporations as Bechtel Group and BWXT to continue managing the labs as a limited liability corporation.
As classes are starting up again on UC campuses across California, the movement for a nuclear free UC is also starting up again. A new avenue to demand accountability from the university is emerging – students & alumni pledging to withhold post-graduate support through an online campaign, until the UC takes action:
Five reasons the UC should sever ties to the labs:
– The UC is implicitly endorsing non-compliance with the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by participating in the creation of new nuclear weapon technologies.
– The nuclear industry is notorious for its devastating environmental and health impacts.
– Nuclear weapons testing and waste disposal from the labs is a major factor in the ongoing genocide of Native American peoples today. The Nevada Test Site and the proposed waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain are both on Western Shoshone land.
– Bechtel Group, UC’s lab-management partner, has a long history of irresponsible environmental practices and human rights violations. Currently, they are one of the largest profiteers of the Iraq War.
– UC holds no real control over research directions or policy at the labs nor does the funding they receive from the Department of Energy go towards anything but the labs themselves. Their management is in name only and simply acts as a stamp of legitimacy for the nuclear weapons, military-industrial complex.
Calling all UC students & alumni – take a stand now against nuclear development and corporatization at your school. Show the UC how you feel about being complicit in the nuclear industry by joining the “No Nukes at the UC” campaign:
(Newt…now there’s your “family values” – promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Newt dumped cancer-stricken 1st wife. When his pastor criticized him for not supporting his two kids, he left the church. Newt dumped 2nd wife after cheating on her with the Congressional aide who is now his 3rd wife. The scandal sidelined Newt in 2008.
Until now.
My fellow Americans, meet a true defender of traditional marriage:
With Newt’s YouTube plug for Prop 8 now airing over at the Yes on 8 blogs, maybe today’s a good day to revisit Jeralyn’s TalkLeft post from 2002 on the subject of Republican Sexual Hypocrisy.
Jeralyn supplies three sources (one for each marriage, I suppose):
I.
In 1981, Newt dumped his first wife, Jackie Battley, for Marianne, wife number 2, while Jackie was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment. Marianne and Newt divorced in December, 1999 after Marianne found out about Newt’s long-running affair with Callista Bisek, his one-time congressional aide. Gingrich asked Marianne for the divorce by phoning her on Mother’s Day, 1999. — New York Post, July 18, 2000
II.
Gingrich’s misbehavior goes back years. Fidelity was apparently never his strong point. After marrying his high school math teacher, Jacqueline Battley, even he admits: ”In the 1970s, things happened.”
As a congressional candidate, he conducted an affair in 1977, a year before enlisting Jackie to write a letter attacking his opponent for planning to leave her family in the district: ”When elected, Newt will keep his family together,” declared one unintentionally hilarious campaign ad. Gingrich ended his 19-year marriage shortly after his victory.
He famously visited Jackie in the hospital where she was recovering from surgery for uterine cancer to discuss details of the divorce. He later resisted paying alimony and child support for his two daughters, causing a church to take up a collection. For all of his talk of religious faith and the importance of God, Gingrich left his congregation over the pastor’s criticism of his divorce.
Soon thereafter, Gingrich married Marianne Ginther, whom he had previously met at a political fund-raiser. He called her ”the woman I love” and ”my best friend and closest adviser” in his first speech as House speaker, in January 1995… Yet, his relationship with Bisek, a House employee, apparently extended back to 1993 while he was talking of reforming the corrupt welfare state and promoting society’s moral regeneration. Rumors of his relationship with Bisek, more than 20 years his junior, did not stop him from writing his political testament, in which he criticized sex outside of marriage, promoted traditional family life and opined that ”any male who doesn’t support his children is a bum.”
In May 1999, however, Gingrich called Marianne at her mother’s home. After wishing the 84-year-old matriarch happy birthday, he told Marianne that he wanted a divorce. — Copely News Service, August 21, 2000
III.
Gingrich’s most recent ex-wife says he ditched her eight months after finding out she had multiple sclerosis. Marianne Gingrich, 48, shopping a book proposal “both personal and political” about how women are treated in D.C., says the ex-speaker of the House told her on Mother’s Day 1999 that he wanted a divorce, after learning she had a neurological condition that could lead to MS. In 1981, the former congressman told his other ex-wife, Jackie Battley, that he was dumping her, after she had been hospitalized with cancer. Newt, 57, will wed ex-congressional aide Callista Bisek, 34 — with whom he had an affair while still married to Marianne — on Aug. 18. — Akron Beacon Journal, July 25, 2000
In all fairness to the Yes on 8 camp, Newt was their Plan B.
Which gets us to the Florida Family Policy Council website, where we learn:
“Florida Family Policy Council is associated with Focus on the Family.”
“We will endeavor in all that we do to be people of good faith and good will in making the case for Biblical family values in the public square.”
I trust that your Biblical family values require that you provide complete and honest reporting of all contributions to the Proposition 8 campaign.
I’m still working on that “Stand for Marriage, Inc.” entity … any ideas?
UPDATE (h/t LijDavid over at Pam’s House Blend):
Stand for Marriage is at 1 South 6th Street; Terre Haute, IN 47807. It is otherwise known as the James Madison Center for Free Speech – JMC. But more correctly known as the law offices of Bopp Coleson & Bostrom. James Bopp Jr is the name on many of the JMC. Officers of the JMC are:
CORPORATE OFFICERS
President – Wanda Franz, Ph.D., Morgantown, WV
Secretary – Darla St. Martin, Washington, D.C.
Treasurer – David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., Washington, D.C.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Darla St. Martin, Washington, D.C.
David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., Washington, D.C.
Wanda Franz, Ph.D., Morgantown, WV
Betsy DeVos, Grand Rapids, Michigan
David Norcross, Washington, D.C.
GENERAL COUNSEL – James Bopp, Jr.
James Bopp, Jr., is the general counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech. Legal services are provided to the Madison Center by the law firm of Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Bopp is well known up here fighting against gay rights. He is also the General Counsel, National Right to Life Committee, Inc., 1978-Present, and Special Counsel, Focus on the Family, 2004-Present. He has also represented National Right to Life Committee, Focus on the Family, Christian Broadcasting Network, Traditional Values Coalition, Home School Legal Defense Association, Vision America, National Organization for Marriage, Common Sense America, Catholic Citizens Committee, Life Issues Institute, the Christian Coalition, Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Concerned Women of America, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Republican Governors Association, the Libertarian Party, Republican National Committee, and the state Republican Parties of Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont.
California Rep. David Dreier said Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy demonstrates her connection to other families who have similar issues.
Ah, empathy from an unmarried congressman who is trying to connect with voters instead of answer the questions about McCain’s vetting process for who he thinks should have their finger on the trigger if his cancer catches up with him.
But it isn’t about the daughter of Palin (who will probably join the Harriet Miers club faster than you can say “troopergate”). It is about McCain’s reckless recklessness. Here he goes again, the polls showed that if he put Joementum on the ticket he’d be hated by everyone but Joe Klein so instead he over-reacted to his advisers and put on somebody with literally no qualifications and obviously zero vetting as troopergate is more than enough for her to look less mentally unbalanced than Eagleton.
But here in California, once again we have David Dreier working against the facts. Nobody thinks an abstinence-only/creationism debate is going to help the GOP, yet David Dreier sticks out his credibility once again to be a Rubber Stamp for the Bush Administration. This time, the Third Bush Administration.
While other cities are hoping for federal aid to help them address the problem, Lancaster is using city funds to buy, renovate and sell vacant homes. The need is clear….
So far, Lancaster’s Redevelopment Agency has agreed to spend more than $4.1 million to acquire and refurbish 41 homes. The city took ownership of the first six properties beginning in May….
Lancaster’s program mainly targets depressed neighborhoods. The city is paying between $80,000 and $110,000 for the properties and will accept bids from contractors to renovate them. Proposed repairs would include environment-friendly features such as drought-tolerant landscaping and tankless water heaters. When sold, the city hopes to recoup the price paid for each home, including the cost of renovation. But Brubaker said the goal is to keep the selling price reasonable for a family of four whose income does not exceed about $71,800 — California’s average salary for qualifying for subsidized housing.
This is precisely what governments need to be doing right now. The right-wing effort to use government to stimulate homeownership has been a catastrophic failure, leaving the global economy in ruins, millions of families bankrupt and without a home, and California facing a very uncertain future.
Lancaster’s model is more along the lines of what should have been tried all along, and what is now a priceless opportunity. The foreclosure crisis has left cities like Lancaster with a huge glut of empty houses while everyone else struggles with still-high housing costs, as homelessness rises. It’s a small move to rectify a massive misallocation of capital and resources, but the bubble’s collapse provides opportunities for affordable housing that should be seized.
It’s good that Lancaster is also promoting sustainable renovation, something that is often overlooked in the foreclosure crisis – too many cities simply want to recreate a failed 20th century model of car-dependent, resource-wasting suburbia. And Lancaster’s move isn’t a long-term solution nor a sign that suburbia is still viable – we do still need to redefine the California Dream by promoting greater urban densities. But that doesn’t preclude governments from using the foreclosure crisis to create truly affordable opportunities for Americans to own homes.
The details matter, and the public has to be engaged to ensure that cities don’t use this as a way to give away refurbished properties to developers or speculators. Still, it’s good to see some California cities getting smart about how to deal with this crisis.
For the most part, I wasn’t all that prolific during the convention. There are better livebloggers than me, so a special thanks to those who did so here. What I did accomplish was talking to a lot of people, which really was quite a thrill. It’s always fun to see old friends and meet new ones. So, if nothing else, it was worth the trip for that alone, even with the fact that we still have a few wedding details to wrap up.
Yet, of course, there was more. Because we had the California “state blogger pool” pass, the four members of our editorial board had the opportunity to sit on the floor with the delegation. So, for that, thank you to the DNC and the CDP. From a personal perspective, being at Mile High for Barack Obama’s acceptance of the nomination was one of the most incredible experiences of my life, and I will treasure the memory. Of course, now it is even more incumbent upon us to make sure Obama wins, because it would sure stink to have that memory tainted with electoral defeat.
Follow me over the flip…
The entire week was a great experience. From the parties to the Big Tent to the Pepsi Center it was a blast. As Dave has pointed out once or twice, it’s a well managed message that emerges, with little news coming out of the event itself. However, the message of an energized Democratic Party ready to take back the White House is an important one. The Big Tent was pulled off exceedingly well, with everything but the air-conditioning and power systems working fantastically. It was nice to have something of a “home base” to work from. So, thanks to all the groups who helped out with that. (Including California’s own Courage Campaign.)
The parties were, at times lavish, at times trying, but always hopping. Being at the convention is a lesson in horse-trading. Negotiation is a valuable skill as you do your best to get into the hot events. Of course, knowing people works wonders as well.
I hope by now everybody that didn’t watch the ceremonies live, has had the opportunity to watch it. If not, what’s wrong with you? Get to it! No point describing the actual events of the day, because you saw those just as well as me. However, being on the floor you saw the little things, felt the emotion, and yes, saw more than a few people crying.
Last Thursday was historic for obvious reasons. This was the first non-white major party nomination ever. That’s a big deal, and coming 45 years after the “I Have a Dream” Speech, we see just how prescient MLK truly was, and just how wrong John McCain is for this country. After all, it was McCain who prominently and repeatedly opposed honoring MLK, this Titan of the 20th Century who had the foresight and the hope to dream at a time when not everybody had the courage to dream. After all, hope itself often takes great amounts of courage. From Sen. Obama’s speech on Thursday:
But what the people heard instead – people of every creed and color, from every walk of life – is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one. “We cannot walk alone,” the preacher cried. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”
Yet it is surely backward that McCain-Palin plan to take us. To the days before Roe v Wade, to the past eight years of a reckless foreign policy and a domestic policy that turns Robin Hood on his head. I was fortunate enough to be able to say that I was there when Barack Obama plunged head-long into general campaign.
So, check out the pictures. Sorry they’re not A+ primo photos, but you do what you can do. After all, I have to be sly when trying to capture pictures of celebrities. Next time I’ll get Oprah…
