Doomed democracy

In Michigan last Wednesday, a couple female state representatives didn't like the restrictions to abortion the GOP men were voting on. They said so, one of them actually using the word "vagina." The GOP men pretended to be scandalized and banned the two women from speaking during the next day's session. Sounds like little boys whining and kicking their heels.

The two women contacted Eve Ensler and arranged to have a performance of Ensler's theater piece The Vagina Monologues on the Capitol steps this evening.


Update: I checked gay blogs about the event, but didn't check an obvious choice until after I posted. The Detroit Free Press has a nice article, including descriptions of various protest signs. About 2,500 people showed up.




A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows the Millennial generation (born 1982-2000) is dropping their belief in God. Only 68% believe in God this year, down from 76% in 2009 and 83% in 2007. In contrast, belief in God has held somewhat steady for Gen X (1965-1981), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), and the Silent Generation (1925-1946), though each one has fewer believers than the one before.

Naturally, the comment section of this post on Talking Points Memo was buzzing. The first commenter wrote:

I doubt people like Dawkins and Hitchens have much, if anything, to do with the rise in atheism in my generation. The failures of institutional religion, specifically the Catholic pedophilia scandals and the Christian Right's scorched earth campaign against gay rights and abortion, are the real cause. When the most prominent believers are exposed as evil and intolerant, why would we want to be on their side?

A few years ago (perhaps part of the Citizens United case) Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that requiring people to stand up in public for political acts creates civic courage. Without that democracy is doomed. This was a way of saying that campaign donations should not be anonymous.

Apparently, democracy is doomed. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell no longer agrees. He now wants to repeal campaign disclosure laws enacted after Nixon's resignation. Some of the things he said recently:

That's the whole point of my speech today. We don't need the government micromanaging in this country who gets to speak and who doesn't.
…
We don't need the government targeting people. We don't need the administration - this is not the first administration - some of us are old enough to remember the Nixon administration making up enemies lists, using the power of the government to go after people, to shut them up, to sit them down.
…
We don't need the government targeting people. We don't need the administration - this is not the first administration - some of us are old enough to remember the Nixon administration making up enemies lists, using the power of the government to go after people, to shut them up, to sit them down.
…
I don't think that regular citizens should have to experience any political courage at all.

They're getting pretty brazen about it.



Terrence Heath, a gay dad, talks about the fantastic work his son Parker's 3rd grade teacher did over the last year. He tries to fit that with Romney's claim to need to cut more teachers. Cut teachers and the class size must go up. Parker was in a class of 25. A few more than that and Parker would not have gotten the help he needed. Maybe Romney thinks public schools, like rich private schools, have only 12 kids in a class.



Mark Vorpahl wrote an article for the Portland Occupier and posted on the Occupy Wall Street blog discussing the failure of the Wisconsin governor recall vote. The significant issue was that the vote was to recall Scott Walker and replace him with a particular Democrat, Tom Barrett. The problem was that Barrett appears to be as much of a friend of the 1% as Walker. Why change the devil you know for the devil you don't? Taken one step more, the Dems of Wisconsin appear to be as well greased with corporate money as the GOP. They aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them.