By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

One recent evening, in the cool aftermath of scorching midterm elections, I listened to a writer read his poetry to a haphazard group of Fallbrookians.

We were gathered at the Café des Artistes. Not the erstwhile Upper West Side watering hole of Manhattan’s creative aesthetes — those aficionados of dining amid the bare-nekid nymphs of Howard Chandler Christy — but the Café’s loving replica, brought to Main Street Fallbrook by the charmingly snarky Michael, himself a Brooklyn baby.

Now, Fallbrook is one of those bucolic towns most folks in San Diego have heard of, maybe, but they think it might be out in the backcountry, not abutting the north end of the county’s inland freeway. Up here, groves and chaparral vie for scarce water and battle encroaching development. Fallbrook catches the tailwinds of the unstaunched stream of commuters flowing between the city and countless cookie-cutter communities that ripple farther and farther from the sea.

But in Fallbrook, the landscape precludes any such sprawl, hemming us in with canyons and nature reserves and Camp Pendleton, home to the Marine Corps’ largest amphibious assault training facility and seventeen miles of undeveloped shoreline — potentially instructive juxtapositions that are lost on those compelled to spray their scent on expanding territories. With no new lands to mark, and with imported water ever more expensive, Fallbrook is gradually abandoning our agricultural tradition. We raze our groves, scrape the sage and mustard from our rolling hills, boot our pickers from their encampments, and infill the spaces with housing … when the economy allows.

And we are contrarians in other ways.

Fallbrook’s collective conservative vote stands in opposition to our progressive state that gave all but one statewide office to the Dems. And, since Election Day, the most diehard of rightwingers have taken regular breaks from stomping the damn snails and griping about the damn illegals to hopefully check the state website for who is ahead in the attorney general vote tally: Steve Cooley, the Republican would-be Prop. 8 defender from Southern California or Kamala Harris, the damn liberal from the north. Of course, not quite as many diehard liberals have been doing the same, just as eager for their Democratic defender of equality to win out over the damn bigot from the south.

Other than that race, Fallbrook remains relatively unscathed by the elections that shifted control of the House of Representatives from Democrats to Republicans. Besides, economy-driven voters are already suggesting they don’t expect much of anything different from the new majority. And in Fallbrook, politics is mostly, well, local, as in all about me local.

We barely notice the persistent rounds of musical chairs played by our rightwing representatives, bounced every few years by term limits. And, to be frank, most of us don’t even know the names of the folks running for our little Fallbrook advisory committees — unless one of them is a neighbor or coaches the kids’ soccer team or plays Bunco with the wife. We’re too busy sharing pocket gopher eradication techniques and passing flasks at the holiday parade, if we’re not in it.

Sure, we don’t care much for the other party, but for most of us all the wrangling pretty much balances out in the end — or wherever we are at the moment — and we simply live with our differences.

Some of us hope for a new quarry’s approval and the jobs we think it will bring, and some of us tenaciously fight it, for the unwanted things it will bring to our environment.

Some of us welcome back a county supervisor who will continue to swap our votes for grants for things foundational and things frivolous, and some wish we could have our new library without him.

Some of us weep when our gay children are denied a club on our high school campus, and some of us are fearfully relieved.

Some of us are grateful we can make the short trip from here to the coast for an abortion, and some try to talk us out of it.

Some of us wonder if we’ll be jerked from our families and dumped back across the border, and some of us don’t understand why it hasn’t already happened.

Some of us settle before the TV, eager for Survivor or CSI or The Office, and some of us stumble into the Café des Artistes, eager for hope, for enlightenment, for camaraderie. There, we might find a novelist who tells us of the river of weapons that floods the U.S.-Mexican border just an hour away or a professor who wraps tales of her dog around the seeping sorrow of a lost mate or the memoirist who traded a lovingly handcrafted boat for the book he wanted more.

And on this recent evening, we — we romantics and racists, we faithful, atheists and agnostics, we veterans and peace demonstrators, we Republicans and Democrats and American Independent Party members who thought it was the same as being “independent,” so we really need to reregister! — we entered the Café and found the Buddhist poet physicist. He had us look at life with all its suffering and helped us laugh at it, because “Real Zen students don’t have TVs,” even though most of us do.

For all our prejudices and peculiarities, I sometimes wish Congress could make nice at least as well as Fallbrook. But if I understand Zen Buddhism correctly, that bumps me out of the here and now. So maybe I’ll just watch some TV.

Love,
K-B

Note: Thanks to poet and author Jon Wesick for the inspiration.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

The Howard Chandler Christy mural image is from The Berkshire Review.

The day after on Main Street

Who knew? All these folks who each think they’re the only Democrat in Fallbrook, suddenly they’re all owning up to being Democrats. … Guess that means we didn’t do so bad after all.

The day after at church

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

There is nothing like a midterm election to reveal our putrid political underbelly. It is a dark, stinky place where paranoia, distrust, disaffection and outright deceit are reduced to hatred in a cauldron fired by fear and boiling over in a miasmic wave of bigotry.

Gross, eh?

Throw in a recession and all its attendant terrors, and what do you get?

“Double, double toil and trouble” from a bunch of — well, to be kind, let’s call them “witches,” and they are dishing misogyny, homophobia, racism, Islamaphobia and your everyday fear mongering, while they await the party that would be king.

And the lowly peasants, what do we do? Do we stand idly by, lackadaisically poking pitchforks at those we’ve been told are monsters? Pretty much, a lot of us do, but let’s take a closer look.

Pick your favorite monster and respond.

Strong women in the political arena? What would you do?

1. Call her a whore for snagging a coveted endorsement.
2. Call her a whore for simply serving in public office with chestal hangings.
3. Push her to the ground and stomp on her head, then demand her apology.
4. Take a swing at her.
5. Admit you’re a misogynistic troglodyte and stay home until you’ve read the entire Domestic Violence Awareness Project website.

Homosexuals claiming equal rights? What would you do?

1. Resort to the abomination theory.
2. Promote the disenchanted gay voting bloc theory, that slow progress will keep gays from the polls, thereby undermining further progress, à la Sharron Angle (see below).
3. Tell straight-and-narrow folks homophobia is A-OK — because Brian Brown says so.
4. Post a Facebook rant, encouraging gay suicides.
5. Admit your sins, beg forgiveness, then lighten up and have a gay old time.

Brown immigrants turning your day gray? What would you do?

1. Run an ad à la Sharron Angle that attempts to disenfranchise Latino voters by discouraging them from voting.
2. Run ads filled with threatening Latino faces and claim they aren’t racist.
3. Tell Latino high school students that you can’t distinguish Latinos, because some of them actually look Asian.
4. Declare undocumented immigrants are rapists.
5. Admit you’re a bigot and stay out of politics.

Deluded into believing all Muslims are terrorists? What would you do?

1. Redefine “Arab” as a slur and sling it at a campaign opponent.
2. Redefine “Muslim” as a slur and sling it at a campaign opponent.
3. Spread your irrational fear by announcing that every time you see someone in Muslim garb it gives you the creepers, even though you know it shouldn’t.
4. Tell your supporters Sharia (Islamic religious law) is creeping into U.S. cities.
5. Remember Timothy McVeigh, read some Tea Party Patriots comments, and admit to the enemy within.

So, how’d you do?

There are, of course, no right answers. But, then, what is the answer?

What do you suppose it is that renders such behaviors acceptable in our political discourse? It’s dismaying to think that our economic woes, September 11, and all the other crises we’ve borne in the last few decades might have turned us into a nation of loathsome, Bubbafied bigots. Have we transformed the welcoming arms of Liberty into xenophobic fists? Home of the brave to home of the bully? Land of the free to land of the terrified? Are our huddled masses yearning to take out their miseries on the lesser fellow?

A friend signed off a recent email with, “Hate fills the air. Best regards–,” and I wonder: Which candidates are best equipped to fill the air with love?

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the OB Rag.

California’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina died Saturday when her Retire Boxer Money Bomb exploded prematurely, killing Fiorina immediately and injuring a campaign aide. Fiorina, the infamously fired CEO of computer giant Hewlett Packard, was 56.

Distraught and slightly singed campaign manager, Marty Wilson, stood outside Fiorina’s Sacramento campaign headquarters as firefighters extinguished a small fire caused by the explosion.

“We don’t know what happened,” Wilson said. “Carly was getting ready to launch the money bomb email. She’d just put another million bucks into the campaign, but that was it; she wasn’t going to risk any more of her own money, so we really needed contributions. Anyway, the fuse must have been faulty. The thing went off in Carly’s face. It’s gotta be [U.S. Senator Barbara] Boxer’s fault. Or [President Barack] Obama’s. We demand an immediate investigation and an apology to Carly and the California voters, not only for this deliberate assault but for Boxer’s refusal to have an honest and serious debate about the issues during this crucial time for our nation!”

Paramedics treated Wilson on the scene for a minor head injury and first-degree burns.

The deadly explosion followed another life-threatening incident just two weeks ago at the Republican Party’s Hispanic 100 Awards Gala in Newport Beach. According to an event volunteer, Fiorina had been “slamming down tequila shots, trilling her tongue and shouting ‘Andale!’ in this really pathetic accent. Then she passed out. We thought she was dead at first. But, nope, she barfed and got up to dance.”

Republican Party insiders had purportedly been concerned about Fiorina’s “self-sabotaging behaviors” since she became an economic advisor to the 2008 McCain-Palin presidential campaign, which made Wall Street and CEO compensation reform key platform issues. Skydiving into a campaign event, Fiorina had become entangled in the lines of her golden parachute, preventing the chute from fully opening. Skydive experts at the time said she would have plunged to her death had she not had the presence of mind to pull the cord on her bonus chute. Still, she made a hard landing when she said Sarah Palin was unqualified to run a corporation, and the campaign fired her from the media circuit.

Although Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett Packard was longer lived than her time on McCain’s campaign, she suffered a more devastating crash from HP and was eventually ranked by Portfolio magazine as one of the 20 worst CEOs ever:

“A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005. THE STAT: HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.”

Despite her very public HP failure — or perhaps because of it — Fiorina was determined to prove herself in the public arena, and Boxer’s senate seat became her next target. She reconciled with Palin, who endorsed her in the primary, when Fiorina depended on the conservative Republican vote to topple moderate Republican Tom Campbell.

But just last weekend, noting Palin’s sagging polling numbers, Fiorina declined to appear with her at a Republican event in California. Palin’s husband, Todd, subsequently leaked a scathing email:

“Sarah put her ass on the line for you, Curly [sic]. She thought you were the real deal. But you and me both know you’re no Joe Sixpack. All that crap about starting as a secretary. You pulled yourself up with your family’s gold plated bootstraps. And now you can’t answer a simple invitation with a yes? Please explain how this endorsement stuff works, is it to be completely one sided, cuz if so, you don’t have a wolf’s chance in Wasilla of getting a cabinet seat in Sarah’s administration. You think you can throw a punch, but my Sarah can take you out in one shot! From a helicopter!”

Fiorina’s past job performance was not her only weakness on the campaign trail. She was A-rated pro-life in a pro-choice state. She supported offshore drilling in an anti-drilling state. She supported Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law in a state where 71 percent of Latino voters oppose it. And, in her op-ed piece announcing her campaign she highlighted her failure to exercise her right to vote: “Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been.”

One of the few votes Fiorina reported casting was for California’s anti-same-sex marriage ballot measure, Proposition 8. That revelation, apparently intended to woo conservative voters, attracted the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay lobbying organization, which invested in anti-gay, pro-Fiorina advertising targeting Latino voters.

“Wouldn’t you know it!” said Juan Bautista, an independent gay voter, who was passing by Fiorina headquarters when the money bomb exploded. “One of the few times Fiorina bothered to vote, and it was for Prop. 8. What a poop she is, er, was. And the NOM ad, have you seen it? It’s pure manipulation. At least it’s not as bad as that pissy Sharron Angle ad telling Arizona Latinos not to vote at all. ¡Pendejos racistas!”

Most daunting of all Fiorina’s political challenges was her claim to be a jobs champion, which was contradicted by her corporate experience, noted for mass layoffs and outsourcing jobs overseas, strategies that have not been forgotten by California’s workforce.

Pedicab driver Bobby Sneed, who dropped off a fare just before the explosion, had little faith in Fiorina’s commitment to creating jobs for Californians.

“She laid me off from HP, shipped thousands of jobs overseas, and got a $45 million boot out the door. Now I’m essentially unemployed, she’s worth $120 million, and she was asking voters to give her money? Good lord! She wanted the senate badly enough, she should’ve just sucked it up and bought it, like Meg Whitman. Look, Fiorina soared to the corporate heights by whatever means she had at her disposal — and her dad’s telling her she’d never amount to anything surely motivated her — but she lacked the ability to translate her personal ambitions into a vision that captured the voter’s heart. And, I know it’s petty, but I couldn’t get beyond that snarl she was always trying to hide.”

Perhaps feminist activist Gloria Steinem captured the tormented essence of Carly Fiorina best, after Fiorina committed a live microphone faux pas in June:

“We had the prospective joy of two powerful women competing for a U.S. Senate seat. And in a moment of unintended, unedited honesty, what did we get from Fiorina? A pearl of wisdom? A poignant revelation? No. We got a snarky comment about Senator Boxer’s hair. That, Sweetie, is not feminism.”

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

Note: Carly Fiorina image from Carly for California campaign ad; Carly punch, from Californians Opposed to Carly Fiorina Facebook page; Carly Out of Control from Carly for CA website.

California gubernatorial candidate, billionaire and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman was killed Saturday in a gruesome accident at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park during a campaign event, bringing to an end a tough campaign and a tough corporate executive-turned-politician. She was 54.

The Republican candidate was torn asunder when she became entangled in the tether lines of two animals, an African elephant and a domestic donkey. The animals had been positioned for a photo opportunity at a Whitman rally that had attracted hundreds of gun rights and anti-illegal immigration activists, and a smattering of Chanel-clad businesswomen.

Park employee Juanita Calderon, a shaved-ice vendor and college student, recounted the horrific incident.

“Whitman is telling this crowd of white people that she doesn’t own a gun, but if she did, gun control fanatics would have to take it out of her cold, dead hands. And then all these people cheer, and some NRA nut — he’s wearing a t-shirt that says ‘You name it, I hunt it’ — he fires a shot in the air, and the elephant and the donkey go crazy! And Whitman is trying to placate them, but she’s caught in their ropes. And then, well, it was just horrible, really gross! And as security is carting the shooter off, he’s yelling, ‘It wasn’t me! It’s the gun’s fault — hair trigger! — the gun did it!’ And then the paramedics show up, but they just stand around kicking the Astroturf, because there’s really nothing they can do, because she’s, like, in pieces.”

The sudden end to Whitman’s campaign has left California Democrats stunned and relieved. Charles Garnier, a spokesperson for Jerry Brown, Democratic gubernatorial nominee and former Jesuit seminarian, said by phone that Brown was not available for comment, but offered the candidate’s condolences.

“He’s at church making a novena for her soul, and he sends his heartfelt condolences to her family and campaign staff. … Guess she won’t be a whore for the unions anymore, cutting deals for endorsements. Uh, hey! Am I still on the call? Oh, shi—! Hey man, don’t print that! What’s the real story here: Whitman’s swapping endorsements with unions to save their fat pensions while she cuts everyone else’s or my sexist comment? Well? Well? Oh, you guys’ll just go for the juice, but the union pension deals are the story. It’s the pension deals, you whores! But, no, Whitman won’t talk about that. She’ll just play the victim, like she’s never used the word herself. Whore, whore, whore! Oh, but, yeah, she’s dead. Never mind. Bye.”

As news of Whitman’s death reached the public, reactions revealed mixed opinions of her, her candidacy and her legacy — even at an impromptu memorial Saturday evening, outside her home in exclusive Atherton, California.

There, a consultant to California’s troubled Republican Party, who spoke on condition of anonymity from behind a hedgerow of oleanders, suggested Whitman’s faulty campaign was symbolic of the party’s schism between extreme conservatives and moderates.

“Meg didn’t understand how to finesse the duality of the party or of independent voters — she needed them most. But she tried to placate our loonies by opposing gay marriage, while she supported gay adoptions. She wanted to put limits on abortions, but she supported public funding. She hit her Republican primary opponent for supporting Democrats but she contributed to Senator Barbara Boxer and endorsed her in ’03. Meg was kind of bipolar, but voters are more schizophrenic, and she ended up antagonizing everyone. We all play to the factions, but she jumped in before she understood her target base. That kind of naïveté is as toxic as these oleanders. And, wow, quartered by an elephant and a donkey; it’s grotesquely poetic.”

Mourner and eBay Distinguished Engineer Mortimer Snerd begrudgingly acknowledged Whitman’s business acumen, but took issue with her forceful style.

“Yep, yep, she was a pretty good corporate leader type — except for the outsourcing and shady stock deals — sure enough. But she was always pushing people with her big CEO shove as though we were her puppets. May as well have tried putting a dictator in the governor’s seat. Yep, always pushing — just like Elaine on Seinfeld, except more hostile, and Meg danced pretty weird, too. Anyway, I guess someone finally pushed back, yep. Or, in this case, it was pulled back. That’d be Karma, for sure.”

Despite her critics, Whitman was widely recognized for her keen ability to acknowledge mistakes while shifting gears mid-spin. Her campaign staff began referring to her as the “Non Sequitur Nabob” when she became plagued with questions about her repeated failure to vote in public elections.

“I’m not proud of my voting record, and I have apologized for it, and tonight I apologize to everyone in California. It was not the right thing to do and no one is more embarrassed by it than me, and if I could change history, I would. But what I can do is tell voters about how I believe we can turn this state around. This state is in an enormous mess. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results.”

It is not yet clear if Whitman’s death will bring an end to the tenth-hour attack from publicist and attorney Gloria Allred, targeting Whitman’s illegal hiring and inopportune firing of an undocumented immigrant housekeeper. According to The Bay Citizen, a “very informal survey” of the “average Jo” on the street, conducted before Whitman’s death, revealed that “few people” had heard about the MegsMaidGate scandal — a very informal response rate that matched the number of respondents who had actually heard of Whitman, despite her substantial investment in her campaign.

Indeed, of the $138 million in expenditures reported by the campaign, $119 million came from Whitman’s personal fortune, a figure that seems to belie her statement at the September 28 debate between Whitman and Brown.

“I don’t think you can buy elections. I think Californians are too smart.”

Whatever Whitman’s ultimate legacy, her final gesture was one of generosity. A rumor that half of Whitman’s billion-dollar fortune will go to a new shelter for Atherton’s battered spouses and household employees was confirmed late last night by Atherton Mayor Kathy McKlite.

“You’d be surprised how much domestic violence our little community sees,” McKlite said by phone. “Abuse occurs in every socioeconomic category, but we really can’t expect our people to head to a shelter in Menlo Park! This bequest is a fitting legacy for Meg, given, well, things it’s not seemly to mention. Nonetheless, it’s wonderful to see some of Meg’s money go to a truly worthy cause!”

Love,
K-B

Note: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And you can help.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

The catsup and voting record photos are from Meg 2010 Facebook page; the debate photo is from the UC Davis debate website.

Christine O’Donnell, Delaware’s controversial Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, is dead. And the Tea Party mourns.

But O’Donnell’s lunacy— er, her legacy lives on in the hearts of those nutty Delaware citizens who would have cast their votes for the anti-masturbation, witchcraft-dabbling, sexual-purity touting, resume-embellishing pauper — had she not dropped dead on the campaign trail Friday.

Yet O’Donnell’s death is testament to her passion for the causes she embraced during her forty-one years. After playing the strumpe— the trumpet in college, she dedicated her life to abstinence, a dedication so fervent, it killed her: O’Donnell died of an apparent saltpeter overdose.

Saturday, at a Republican Party event celebrat— announcing O’Donnell’s death, with a backdrop of balloons and “Happy Days Are Here Again,” Delaware Republican Party Chair Tom Ross said:

“We’re in shock. At first, I thought Christine couldn’t get elected dogcatcher. But her ability to dodge past indiscretions, well that was really something to behold! I’m not at all surprised she would die trying to stay in character — er, in control of — well, whatever. She was something, all right! Say, have you tried the Cool Whip ambrosia? It’s pretty darn good!”

Although O’Donnell’s death was met with a sigh of relief— of remorse from GOP quarters, Democrats were devastated by the news. They could not have manufactured a better opposition candidate for their senatorial nominee, Chris Coons.

And those of us in the media will sorely miss the unbridled entertainment O’Donnell brought to the political stage. Who could ever forget her explanation of the evils of human cloning?

“American scientific companies are crossbreeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains!”

Or the press release she purportedly wrote for Concerned Women for America, in which she opined that homosexuality was an “unhealthy lifestyle” and described AIDS education as:

“…a platform for the homosexual community to recruit adolescents and lure teens into a self-destructive sexual lifestyle.”

Whooeee! We would normally have to make this stuff up, but not for O’Donnell. She wasn’t known for her generosity, suffering from chronic indebtedness as she did, but what a gift she was on a slow news day! O’Donnell regularly tossed verbal alms that fed hordes of hungry commentators and journalists.

Her 1996 statement on MTV’s, Sex in the 90s, when she headed The Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, is particularly memorable:

“The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust. … You’re going to be pleasing each other. And if he already knows what pleases him, and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?”

Yes, O’Donnell had a gift for posing the perfect question — and for thinking out of the box, as she did in a 2006 interview in which she redefined the psychology of homosexuality:

“People are created in God’s image. Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors. It’s an identity disorder.”

Although media curiosity was piqued by O’Donnell’s morbid obsession with others’ sexuality, in-depth reporting on a probable cause was regularly derailed by Bill Maher’s obsession with embarrassing the candidate by revealing a series of video clips of her more startling pronouncements.

However, sexpert Dr. Ruth speculated that, unlike the “nature” of homosexuality, O’Donnell had a problem that likely stemmed from a “nurture” crisis in her developmental years.

“First of all, let me tell you that Christine’s concept of sexual purity was stupid,” Dr. Ruth explained. “Her childlike perception was typical of those who step off the healthy path at the religion-sex crossroads. Human sexuality is actually pure in whatever way we express it — gay, straight, bi — as long as we honor our safewords and, of course, unless we repress our sexuality into a teeny tiny ball, tighter and tighter and tighter — until it explodes in a gooey mess all over us! You could take one look at that poor woman and know she was horny as a toad. I would posit that it’s not the saltpeter that killed her; it’s the denial!”

Nonetheless, O’Donnell did have a fun side. She was a delight at cocktail parties, sipping her Virgin Marys and expounding on her sexcapade— her escapades while earning her bachelor’s degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University (which she did not actually achieve until this September after finally finishing her coursework and paying her tuition debt), her time at the University of Oxford (which was not as an Oxford student), her Constitutional Government studies at Claremont Graduate University (of which the university has no record) and the Princeton University masters degree program she indicated attending (but for which she wasn’t qualified to apply).

Yes, O’Donnell occasionally two-stepped around the truth, and Dr. Phil was asked to weigh in on this self-harming behavior, but he was too busy telling a depressed cancer patient to “Get real!” On the other hand, O’Donnell looked like Sarah Palin, which made everything okay — that and her faith.

She once reported that God had said “credibility” to her, “audibly — it wasn’t a thought in my head.”

Indeed, O’Donnell trusted God to just nudge her in the right direction and then she would march forward with the confidence of the crazed— of the saved.

Her commitment to small government and fiscal conservatism resulted in her rejection of the liberal establishment’s unreasonable fiscal dictates. She bravely declined to pay the IRS’ usurious tax bills. She daringly attributed personal expenses to her campaigns. And she deftly shifted blame for her insolvency to her political opponents — possible comeuppance for demeaning her candidacy.

Yes, O’Donnell’s bold stances were perched on a firm foundation of evangelical faith. As long as she had an audience, she was ever-eager to confront the most treacherously complex of faith-based topics with an unusual idioc— an unusual intelligence, topics such as evolution:

“Evolution is a myth,” she declared on Politically Incorrect in 1998, offering as proof, “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

And she drilled head-on into virginity in her article, “The Case for Chastity.”

“I know many physical virgins who are not sexually pure,” she wrote. “I know many virgins who are into pornography or who are ‘doing everything but’ with their boyfriends. On the flip side, I know many non-virgins who live beautiful, holy, pure lives through the power of Christ’s blood.”

Hmm, profound … profoundly … profound.

Whatever she is or was, controversy has inevitably followed O’Donnell to her grave. A former campaign aide, David Keegan, minced no words while reveling at Saturday’s Republican gathering:

“God smote her down. When God said, ‘credibility’ to Christine, it was a criticism, not a compliment. She was an embarrassment, a liability to His cause, so He just smote her down!”

Whether it was saltpeter, sexual denial or God that did her in, O’Donnell was a true American character. Only in the United States could such a candidate get so far with so little.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: Photographs from Christine O’Donnell for US Senate.

Crossposted at The Progressive Post and San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

In the meantime…

If your state has ballot measures, please learn a little something before casting your vote — consider who is funding, supporting and opposing a ballot initiative before taking a position.

Ballotpedia is one of the less biased sources of ballot measure information.

Love,
K-B

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Updated 13 September 2010 and 14 September

Supervisor Bill Horn has firmly established himself as a man of consumptive excess.

I write not of his notable girth, but rather of his carnivorous proclivity for overindulging in the largess of his public office — for his own benefit. Put another way, Horn is one greedy cuss. And, perhaps, a desperate one, as his excesses are nibbling at his seat in an unsure election year.

From blatantly ignoring land-use regulations and campaign reporting requirements (which resulted in a $12,000 “settlement”), and apparently communicating illegally with the developer of a proposed project, to swapping ideological voting blocs for tax-funded grants, Horn is on the verge of following the descent of Representative Randy Cunningham — an erstwhile war hero whose corrupted character crashed and burned in 2005.

Will 2010 be the year of Horn’s self-destruction?

On September 2, Horn was soundly rebuked when San Diego County revoked a controversial $20,000 grant that Horn had designated for Life Perspectives, a self-proclaimed “nonreligious” group that County Counsel John Sansone determined creates religious materials. The organization’s seeming lack of self-awareness is sound argument enough for denying the grant; if it has been intentionally misleading the public, that would be a clincher.

Despite revelation that the nonreligious group is indeed religious, Horn is now attempting to bully the $20,000 back into the group’s fervent hands: He indicates he has helped Life Perspectives amend its grant application to meet County requirements.

Hmmm.

Perhaps the County should require grant applicants to demonstrate the minimal communication, budgeting and organizational skills necessary to prepare their applications on their own — independent of the supervisor who reviews and recommends their grants. Such a requirement would preclude supervisors helping prepare grant applications and then recommending and voting to fund those same grants, thus avoiding both the appearance and the actual fact of a conflict.

Nice concept, eh?

Another nice concept would be for the County to develop a responsible method of reviewing grant applications, so taxpayers are not dependent on journalistic nudging to motivate any County oversight.

Consider the case at hand: Horn is now saying he wants the taxpayers’ $20,000 for Life Perspectives president, Michaelene Fredenburg, to write a book.

Say, I’d like the money to write a book, but I’d certainly never consider asking my fellow taxpayers to give it to me. I’m humping for an agent to get it from an actual publishing house — something the taxpayers are not.

Seriously, Horn indeed wants us to fund Fredenburg’s new book, a companion to her previously published book, Changed: Making Sense of Your Own or a Loved One’s Abortion Experience (apparently self-published in 2008 and available on Fredenburg’s site for $19.95).

It seems Fredenburg made a reproductive choice when she was 18 — to have an abortion — and she has subsequently become unhappy with her decision. I do feel for her. But now she tries to convince other women not to exercise the right she has enjoyed. She says that the resulting “troubling emotions” some people experience post-abortion might require them to purchase her book Changed. And she goes on to suggest “some individuals may benefit from individual or group therapy” based on her next book — the one she wants taxpayers to fund — a “Group Leader Guide for the book Changed, [which] will allow therapists and peer counselors to effectively utilize Changed in a group setting.”

Hmmm, hmmm. I wonder: What’s the County’s cut of book sales?

Or, rather, it would be wise for the County to review Changed, before considering Horn’s recommendation to fund the Group Leader Guide.

Here is some information that might inform the Board of Supervisors’ decision:

– First, a few excerpts from Changed, a “core resource” of Fredenburg’s proposed program, presented with her formatting:

Your emotions may be directed outward
at other people or at God, …

This is all a normal part of moving through the grieving process.

Writing a letter that expresses your feelings to the individuals involved, …
reading the letter to yourself,
and then destroying the letter can be helpful.

As the letter
is torn into little pieces,
imagine the harmful emotions towards others, yourself, or
God

disintegrating. …

Many people who have experienced abortion find great comfort and hope through the prayers and support of others and in the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness.

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.

– The book refers people seeking “post-abortion” help to its affiliated website www.AbortionChangesYou.com, which then refers folks to a zip code search function. My zip code, 92028, produced five agencies, all of which are private organizations with noted religious affiliations: Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center, Pregnancy Resource Center – Vista, Birth Choice of San Marcos, alternatives womens center in Escondido and Rachel’s Hope/La Esperanza de Raquel in Escondido.

– Fredenburg has yet to make public any legitimate professional expertise that is relevant to writing a group therapy guide; although, Garry H. Strauss wrote the afterward for Changed. Strauss is a professor of psychology at the evangelical Christian college, Biola University, and a member of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, whose ethical standards derive from the following Statement of Faith: “The basis of this organization is belief in God, the Father, who creates and sustains us; Jesus Christ, the Son, who redeems and rules us; and the Holy Spirit, who guides us personally and professionally, through God’s inspired Word, the Bible, our infallible guide of faith and conduct, and through the communion of Christians.”

All told, it appears that Horn and Fredenburg have neglected to include in their revamped grant application the fact that Fredenburg’s post-abortion healing efforts have the same religious tone as her other pursuits, a tone that is fine in all ways — except that in our country we don’t use public funds for the promotion of religion.

What is it that Horn and Fredenburg don’t understand about that; what is confusing them? Is it the passion of faith, the pursuit of mission, the arrogance of office, the power-addled death throes of a corrupted politician, or the idiocy of a man who simply thinks he can get away with Hornswoggling the taxpayers yet again?

So, dear Supervisors Greg Cox, Dianne Jacob, Ron Roberts and Pam Slater-Price: What are you going to do Tuesday when Supervisor Horn’s recommendation comes before you?

Love,
K-B

P.S. Say, I hope Horn would be as eager to fund Life Perspectives if it were a Muslim organization, but what do you think?

Supervisor Greg Cox responds: … For weeks, my staff and I have been working with Supervisor Dianne Jacob and her staff to put forth a policy change that will institute a series of reforms for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Program.  The item will be heard at the September 28th meeting and if adopted, will ensure accountability and integrity in the program and bring it back to its original intent.

Regarding tomorrow’s board meeting, I have stated publicly that I am against Supervisor Horn’s recommendation to amend the grant to fund Life Perspectives.

Sincerely,
GREG COX
Supervisor, First District

Note: Horn’s motion died for lack of a second.

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

Photo of Bill Horn from his County website.
Changed image from www.AbortionChangesYou.com.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“What the hell is that?” I asked indelicately.

I slowed the car, and my daughter and I rolled past a plump gal, in cheerful hospital scrubs, folding up a hand-lettered sandwich board that read, “Do you think you’re pregnant? Free ultrasound.” She stood on the side of the road, under the awning of an RV that, according to its signage, hosted a mobile ultrasound unit.

“OK, that’s weird,” said my wonderfully astute Katie.

Indeed, Fallbrook is weird, in ways good and bad. Having had a recent adventure in ultrasound land, however, we were temporarily inclined to suspect more of the bad.

Just a week or so before, beset with a common medical problem, we had dutifully reported to the Fallbrook ob-gyn recommended by Katie’s general practitioner. That the specialist was male was nearly inevitable in our town; that he proceeded to lecture us in the exam room was astounding.

“Now, if you’re pregnant,” he began, “you need to know that I don’t perform abortions and Fallbrook Hospital doesn’t allow them, and there are long-term complications associated with abortion. I’ve—.”

“She’s not pregnant,” I interrupted, “that’s not why we’re here, and you need to know that we are 180 degrees from you on the abortion issue. Ours is not the right family for your message.”

And wouldn’t you know it, he persisted!

“As a physician, I have a responsibility to explain the risks of the procedure, including the psychological risks. I’ve had women in here break down in tears years later when asked how many pregnancies they’ve—.”

I wanted to tell him to keep his focus on crotches and leave the psychology to those qualified in that specialty, but I opted for, “Perhaps I wasn’t clear: We’re not interested in discussing abortion with you, Katie’s not pregnant, and we are quite well informed about the issue. For example, the long-term effects of abortion are wildly misrepresented by anti-abortion groups, and if you actually need to address an unwanted pregnancy with a patient, you should provide accurate, unbiased information.”

Katie, sitting forlornly on the exam table, let loose a groan — one of disgust, not pain. I shut up. The doctor stomped out. And for this, we’d had the costly ultrasound.

Yeah, so, the hand-lettered sign on the side of the road touting free ultrasounds smacked of questionable intent to us. I googled it.

Lo and behold, the mobile ultrasound unit was a gift from the San Diego County taxpayers to the Vista Pregnancy Resource Center. Funny, I don’t recall being asked to sign the card. Indeed, I’m sure I wasn’t, because I wouldn’t have given tax dollars to an organization that indoctrinates its clients.

But County Supervisor Bill Horn would. He gave $50,000 of discretionary tax dollars to the Vista Center for the mobile ultrasound. And now the center makes the RV available to the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center twice a month.

Ah, there was our explanation. But it still felt weird.

Perhaps it would have been wiser if Horn and the religious organization had relied on private contributors, rather than taxpayers, to fund their religious agendas. In fact, it kind of seemed as though that might be a little bit more legal, given our separation of church and state, so I googled a little bit more.

Turns out that Horn also gave 10,000 in taxpayer dollars to the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center to help fund its 2009 fund raiser.

How did he get around the law like that?

Well, in a recent San Diego CityBeat article about Life Perspectives (another religious recipient of Horn’s generous tossing of tax dollars), John Sansone from the County Counsel’s office explained it all. In the last three years, Life Perspectives has received $80,000 in grants from Horn for the group’s annual fund raiser “Life Walk.” Because the grants were for the events, not for the religious anti-abortion curriculum materials that Life Perspectives sells, Sansone said the grants “may fall into a legal gray area.”

“In his ass,” said my wonderfully astute and equally indelicate Katie. And she has a point. Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to promote religious doctrine, so just how stupid do we have to be to buy the line that Bill Horn can, instead, fund fund-raisers that fund religious doctrine?

Implausibly stupid. Or, put another way, as stupid as Bill Horn thinks we are. This is the same Candidate Horn who was overheard in 1995 saying it didn’t matter what he promised on the campaign trail, because the voters wouldn’t remember once he was in office.

Oops.

Apparently it also doesn’t matter that Horn gave 34,000 in taxpayer dollars to a Pregnancy Resource Center (the County website didn’t indicate which one) for computers and a photocopier. Now, do you suppose it copies in gray or color?

And in 2009, Horn gave 35,000 in taxpayer dollars to a Pregnancy Resource Center for moving expenses. Maybe the moving van was gray?

And in 2004, Horn earmarked a $100,000 matching grant for a Pregnancy Resource Center to acquire a “maternity home.” Maybe they were planning to paint the home gray?

And there was the $50,000 for the RV, which was, frankly, more earth tones than gray.

And those examples are just what was available with a quick search of the County website and local news reports.*

Now, to cut Horn some slack, it is possible that the religious groups he has funded with taxpayer dollars are not actually promoting religion. This thought sent me back to Google, which produced the following reality checks:

From the Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center:

Volunteer staff is the heartbeat of this ministry. … Qualifications: a love relationship with Jesus Christ.

What you can do as a volunteer:

Pray.
Serve as a volunteer counselor, receptionist, or office volunteer.
Host a baby shower at your church.
Speak at your church or civic group about the sanctity of life and the work of Fallbrook Pregnancy Resource Center.
Serve as a church liaison for our baby bottle fundraiser or walk for life.
Organize the Sanctity of Life Sunday activities in your church.
Ask your pastor to preach on the sanctity of life and other related topics. …

Interestingly, the Fallbrook Center also promotes renewed virginity for those who repent being sexually active outside of marriage and ask God to make them whole in their hearts — and down there, I suppose.

I really hope none of my tax dollars is being used to teach that nifty bit of doctrine.

Another interesting note is that the Fallbrook Center claims they “recieve[sic] no local, state or government funding. We are completely dependent on our community to supply our annual operating needs.”

That would be another “oops” I guess.

Life Perspectives’ curriculum website provides an equally enlightening reality check. This excerpt is from the Teachers Notes for a teen pregnancy module:

[I]t’s clear that even students who are involved in churches continue to be sexually active and may experience unplanned pregnancies. In 2003, research at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. Three surveys of single Christian adults in the 1990s determined that only one-third were virgins. Studies also show that there is little difference in the abortion rate between women who go to church and women who do not. We need to work together to find ways to be more effective in helping our students make difficult choices that are in line with God’s direction for their lives.

OK, let’s all be honest: Bill Horn is giving tax dollars to religious organizations that — along with any services they might provide — are promoting religious doctrine. If anyone dares deny this, I suggest we all get down on our knees and pray that God might guide him or her to renewed honesty.

Of course, we can also vote for Bill Horn’s opponent in November, Steve Gronke.

In the meantime, Katie and I are casting our votes against doctors who indoctrinate women in the exam room — by finding a new ob-gyn.

Love,
K-B

* In a separate vein, there were a couple other grants worth noting: Horn gave $5,000 to the Santa Margarita Gun Club in 2009 for “ammunition, food, and travel costs including accommodations for the Gun Club’s trip to a national tournament in Camp Petty, Ohio”; and Horn gave $15,000 to the Fairbanks Ranch Association’s teen scholarships for drivers ed. Yep, Fairbanks Ranch (a “gated community of exclusive estates”) — the ritzy part of Rancho Santa Fe. Wouldn’t want all those Bimmers and Jags dinged in the school parking lot.

UPDATE: Hmm, according to the Association’s website, “Fairbanks Ranch is the distinctive home for select families.” Families that cannot afford to pay for their kids’ drivers ed?

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: ICU RV photo from the ICU website; Life Perspectives’ Life Walk photo from the Life Walk website.

On Tuesday’s election

We got so many calls from Steve Poizner [Republican gubernatorial candidate], I figured he was having an affair with someone in the house. But my husband said it wasn’t him.

The four San Diego County candidates who ran for judge because God told them to must have misinterpreted him — they all lost. It’s one of those Fundamentalists are from Mars, God is from Venus sort of things.

Over martinis: Don’t you know any single Marines? I need to be ravaged.

Mother: Last night, after eating pig snouts and sauerkraut, I watched a dwarf in a medieval costume hawk ale to the college students outside my hotel. Oddly cynical.
Daughter: That might be the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.

Read more Fallbrookisms…