Newt Gingrich is on a campaign in search of a presidency, but he’s having some trouble keeping his ambitious foot out of his mouth. Last year, his most foot-worthy faux pas was comparing a proposed Muslim community center in New York to Nazis putting a sign next to the Holocaust Museum. Meanwhile, his second ex-wife, Marianne, was giving him a bit of a boot in an Esquire magazine profile in which she reminisced about asking Newt, while they were married, how he could have given a speech on family values, while he was having an affair. She recalled his response was, “It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

This year, a clodhopper closer to the presidential throne of his dreams, Newt implanted his foot yet again. In the last 10 days, he said and repeated that our child labor laws are “truly stupid.” He suggested that children as young as, say, 9 years old, living in the poorest neighborhoods and attending failing schools where they are taught by failing teachers, should become janitors, working up to, say, 20 hours per week. According to Newt, the benefits of his proposal are that child labor “would be dramatically less expensive than unionized janitors,” whom he would fire, and the poor kids would be “empowered to succeed” as they “begin the process of rising.”

The benefits Newt did not enumerate include being able to use poor kids in poor schools in poor neighborhoods to thumb his nose at labor unions and perpetuating an underclass of menial laborers — a necessity for the continual growth of patriarchal capitalism for which Newt has a certain fondness. Newt’s proposal would also work out quite nicely for all the privileged children, who live in nice neighborhoods and attend successful schools where they are taught by effective teachers, and who are not encouraged to work as janitors, because their privileged parents’ social and professional networks will hand them spiffy jobs when they graduate from college — so they can hire the now all-grown-up and well-trained poor kids to be the janitors in their spiffy leather and chrome offices.

There are other astounding aspects of Newt’s vision for impoverished children: He even wants to do away with food stamps, although he fails to mention such specifics in his list of self-described “extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and to give people a chance to rise very rapidly.” You can read his strategically vague proposals at www.newt.org. But for all his grand rethinking, I wonder that he failed to connect the dots between the poor parents who would lose their janitorial jobs and their poor kids who would take the jobs for “dramatically” lower wages. I also wonder that his only suggestion for the failing schools and failing teachers he mentioned was to cut janitorial expenses! Of course, it’s certainly possible that Newt just didn’t think about the words before he let them roll off his silver tongue. Compassion is not his strong suit. Besides, it is so darn hard to see privilege when you have it, and Newt has a history of letting his ambition trump his humanity.

This all reminds me of my disappointing date with Newt. Oh, not a romantic date. No, to paraphrase a classic Newt slur, I wasn’t young enough or pretty enough to show up on his arm. Rather, it was a date to meet him, ask him a clever question and capture a stellar sound bite or two. This is how it came about. …

In August 1995, Maury Stans called me. You might not know the name — and that proved to be his biggest disappointment. You see, Maury had grown old, old and sorrowful, frustrated and blind, which made writing yet another quest for vindication of his purported involvement in the Watergate scandal so damnably difficult. So difficult, in fact, that in his desperation to demand his innocence of any shenanigans as President Richard Nixon’s treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, Maury had resorted to hiring a friend of a friend, an unknown leftwing feminist writer who would be me, to help him write his memoir. It was his second book, the one he hoped would definitively grant him the exoneration for which he had lusted lo the many years since the Watergate Hotel break-in splattered careers across the spit-shined political patina of the nation’s capitol. If only he could entice folks to read it. If only they would remember who he was.

With hope in his voice, Maury called me because Newt was coming to town. Maury wanted to provide his seasoned counsel to the younger man, and he thought it would do me good to meet the darling of the Republican Party. I suspected Maury also hoped to reignite his faded glory in the glow of the year’s political star. With a flick of his wrist, Newt had launched the 1994 Contract with America, toppled the Democrat’s House majority, catapulted himself into the Speaker of the House seat, and then hit the road to parlay his new book, Restoring the Dream, into future votes and aspirations.

Although his dance card was more than full, the Nixon Library was Newt’s next do-si-do and, while there, he would be privately receiving a select few, those who could be described as conservative white men with big bucks. Maury was also on the list because of his service to the party and the nation. He had been deputy postmaster general and Bureau of the Budget director for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and secretary of commerce for both Eisenhower and Nixon. And, despite Nixon’s abandoning Maury to the Watergate wolves, Maury could raise money like nobody else. In fact, he had raised the bulk of the funds to build the Nixon edifice.

Maury’s offer of an opportunity to chew the fat with Newt, to search for the human behind the elephant tie, was enticing, so I pounced on it, donned my most conservative suit, and tried to achieve a Republican coif — admittedly a lost cause. Then I schlepped through the heat and smog to Yorba Linda, California, in my not so conservative pickup with the prochoice bumper sticker, and parked among the Cadillacs that had been made mostly on foreign soil.

I approached the library half expecting screeching alarms to go off, jackbooted guards to pin me against the wall and search me for liberal contraband. But no: I wended my way innocuously through the hordes of Gingrich groupies, waiting for him to lay hands on their copies of his book. I skated through security with barely a nod from the ramrod guards, and joined Maury to help him shuffle into an intimate sitting room where a selection of the finest local Republican donors, ensconced on exquisite upholstery, eagerly awaited the Newt’s arrival.

Maury wrung his hands with the anxiety of a toppled man first scorned then ignored by the masses. A media honcho positioned his wife for the pending encounter, pulling her skirt hem down to her knees. Carl Karcher, the burger mogul who paid a $664,000 SEC fine to settle insider trading charges, handed out religious tracts with the fervor of a neophyte. I struggled to pick the winning question to pose to the guest of honor. And so we all continued to wait among whispers for the man who would remake the government in his own image.

Then the Secret Service fellows arrived, with their funny posture that made me squirm for them and those little earpieces that begged to be blown in. But still no Newt, and I could wait no longer: I raised one finger and was granted a potty break.

•      •      •

On the way out of the women’s room, as I adjusted the suit and turned a corner, I looked up into the pretty orbs of none other than the Newt himself.

He smiled faintly and said, “Hi,” wiping perspiration from his brow.

Newt looked hot and rushed and tired — and surprisingly vulnerable. In the flush of a Southern California August, his articulate arrogance had melted away, mumbling dark streaks down the front of his pale blue shirt. He looked as though, having returned from the political wars, that he would prefer nothing more than to climb into his latest wife’s lap and suckle his way to the presidency. If only he could, it seemed, he might regain his sense of security.

I paused to consider that such men, so dependent on women, lust for such power. Then I dumped the many erudite and pointed queries I had contemplated putting to Newt, the questions of great import that would have made him take pause and proffer a bit of pompous profundity. Instead, with the most feminist compassion I could muster, I said, “Hot day out there, eh?”

“Sure is,” he replied and scurried into the men’s room to do his thing.

Those were the only words we ever exchanged. Newt’s reception with the VIPs proved nothing more than a swift photo opportunity for major donors with checks in hand and spaces already cleared on their study walls. Maury’s moment in the Newt’s sun was only that: Newt neither sought his sage counsel nor gave him a second to offer it. Instead, Maury and his hopes were dismissed with a slap of brevity. And I deemed my compassion misspent.

It occurred to me then — as it occurs to me now — that one day Newt Gingrich will blindly shuffle behind his much younger wife into an intimate sitting room, where he will hopefully await an audience with the latest Republican Party star, who will take two seconds to pose with the man who would have been king, but couldn’t.

Love,
K-B

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

Note: This is an updated version of a column originally published in 1995.

Photos of Newt and Callista Gingrich from www.newt.org.

Special Thanks to JoJo Diggs For Her Choreography!

Special thanks to Ana Beatriz Cholo, of the Courage Campaign, Chris Lilly and the countless volunteers who stepped up to help at the last minute to make this a success.

Courage Campaign gleefully protests Michele Bachmann outside of the California Republican Convention. For more on the Courage Campaign visit the Courage Campaign.

This video is for educational and awareness purposes only. Dancers are dancing to Mad House’s version of Madonna’s Like a Prayer. To purchase this version of the song please visit iTunes!

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) might not be able to sustain her Tea Party-fueled lead among the perfidy of presidential wannabes, but while she remains in the race, admit it: She makes for good entertainment — in a morbidly fascinating sort of way.

Newsweek magazine’s blatantly sexist cover image of Bachmann, declaring her the “Queen of Rage,” actually elicited a complaint from National Organization for Women (NOW). Yowza, what a coupling! If Bachmann’s campaign lasts, NOW will surely do all it can to otherwise denounce her for her homophobia, anti-women’s and civil rights positions, and bent toward theocracy. But in the meantime, fun, fun, fun!

And the media’s promotion of a catfight, persistently pitting Bachmann against former Alaska governor, 2008 republican vice presidential candidate and Saturday Night Live feeder Sarah Palin — as though they are running a race distinct from the males — is annoyingly inevitable in a culture in which female candidates for our highest offices remain extraordinary and, hence, subject to gendered ridicule by the entrenched patriarchy.

But Palin’s undeclared candidacy seems ever-less a consideration for Bachmann: She barely pulled a whopping 2,000 Palinistas to her nationally-ballyhooed I’m-not-declaring-until-I’m-sure-I-can-win rally speech in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday.

Bachmann at least had the ovaries to declare, but there’s a lot more than brass ovaries to her morbid fascination. The New Yorker’s recent profile, “Leap of Faith,” by Ryan Lizza, did a tidy job of enumerating the oddly extreme influences that have contributed to the Bachmann ideology. One book in particular from Bachmann’s recommended reading list proved even more enlightening than Lizza indicated: Call of Duty, The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee, by J. Steven Wilkins. Wilkins is an evangelical pastor of a breakaway Presbyterian church with passions for maximal fundamentalism and sugarcoated slavery.

Remember the brouhaha that arose from the August 11 candidate debate in Iowa? The crowd booed when a columnist asked Bachmann if, as president, she would submit to her husband, as she has said, prior to running for president, that she does. The uproar was curious, given her overt declarations of bibliocity (let’s go ahead and make that a word), yet she deflected the question. But Call of Duty — #3 on her State Senate must-read list — suggests that Bachmann’s two-step had a disingenuous spin.

Wilkins’s dedication of the book to his six children reads as follows:

To Matt, Jeremy, Bray, Jordan and Caleb,
with the earnest prayer that they might be true gentlemen

and to Charity,
that she might love, honor and obey such a man.

Poor Sweet Charity!

Wilkins goes on to write that “nothing excels the value of a ‘woman who fears the Lord’ (Proverbs 19:14).”

Yep, real Christian men prefer their womenfolk scared. An entertaining juxtaposition with the frequent suggestions that Bachmann herself is kind of scary.

Wilkins concludes his chapter on the godly wife with, “A good wife is truly the most valuable asset any man can have. ‘Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord’ (Proverbs 18:22).”

Please note that the emphasis on “thing” is Wilkins’. Although suggestive of his objectification of women, you have to wonder if Bachmann has internalized that classic rite of marital tyranny, if she actually thinks of herself as a “thing,” subjecting herself to her slightly loony husband’s questionable will — again, something she previously indicated to a Christian audience that she does. Of course, she might have been pandering to the poor women whose oppression she was promoting, but then that wouldn’t be godly, would it.

It would, however, be interesting to know if Bachmann takes Wilkins as literally as she says she takes the Bible.

Wilkins relates how Lee’s wife, Mary, expressed “great distress” at the lack of seats for slaves at worship services, discouraging their attendance. Did Mary then request that chairs be brought to the room or some extra pews be installed or at least a few hay bales be strategically placed? Nope: “As a result, Mary doubled her efforts in the spiritual instruction of her maid Cassy.”

Although Wilkins touts Mary’s response as indication of her humility, grace and caring heart, it’s actually a bit of a non sequitur, although that’s plenty common in politics. Could we then count on President Bachmann to respond to, say, another hurricane spiraling up the eastern seaboard with a declaration of spiritual disaster in that hotbed of heathenism, San Francisco?

To be fair to Mary, her reaction was in keeping with her era — according to Wilkins and presumably Bachmann. Wilkins, citing revisionist texts as ludicrous as his own (e.g. Time on the Cross, by Fogel and Engerman), writes that “the average slave in the South had a higher standard of living than the average poor white in the region.” He quotes Lee as writing that slavery was “a greater evil to the white than to the black race” and “blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially, and physically.” Lee reportedly believed that emancipation required a gradual process over time “for the sanctifying effects of Christianity to work in the black race and fit its people for freedom.”

The clincher from Wilkins and presumably Bachmann: “The two races whose lives were intertwined in the old South were more intimate and dependent upon each other than any two races in any country in the world. This mutual dependence produced an intimacy and trust between white and black races that has seldom if ever existed anywhere in history.” Including the South, you nincompoops! “… In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause.”

That is actually much more disturbing than entertaining. But if you share a common cause for following Bachmann’s nincompoopery, subscribe to Dump Bachmann, a blog that has covered her since 2004, when she was a Minnesota state senator having ousted the 28-year republican incumbent Gary Laidig with a run Bachmann said was not planned. This miraculous faux pas earned Laidig’s recent wrathful description of Bachmann as a “girl scout with a switchblade knife.”

Wonder why NOW didn’t go after that one. …

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and  San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I voted for President Barack Obama, and I don’t care what anyone says, I still like him. And you know why?

#1

I still like Obama because he is not any of the other parties’ alternatives who vied for voter approval in 2008. He is not Senator John McCain or former Governor Mike Huckabee or former Governor and perpetually-tanned Mitt Romney or Congressman Ron Paul or former Senator Fred Thompson or former Congressman Duncan Hunter or former Mayor Rudy Giuliani or perpetual candidate Alan Keyes or Senator and Governor-elect Sam Brownback or former Governor Jim Gilmore or former Congressman Tom Tancredo or former Governor Tommy Thompson — or Prohibition Party Candidate Gene Amundson. (Yes, the Prohibition Party is still on the books, but it has really petered out. Kind of like an opened beer you find beside the Naugahyde recliner after a night of debauchery.)

With the exception of Gene Amundson, who died seven months into Obama’s presidency, imagine what any of these candidates would have done to stem the economic greed bleed created under President George W. Bush’s watch: Any one of them would have given obsequious tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest two percent of folks, tossed two aspirins to the rest of us, and obstructed an unemployment insurance extension in the morning. The hypocrisy of it is not entertaining: Congressional Republicans disdain unemployment extensions “because they increase the deficit,” but they are infatuated with extending Bush-era tax gifts for the rich — even though they increase the deficit. Consequently…

#2

I still like Obama because, contrary to the pundits who have to say pesky things to sell ads and contrary to the congressional Democrats who are now pandering to the progressives they abandoned in the healthcare insurance reform debate, I think President Bill Clinton is correct: President Obama negotiated the best deal possible on the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act. And if the Dems hold it up until January, when the House shifts to a Republican majority, any semblance of a balanced compromise is unlikely.

#3

I still like Obama because some imperfect healthcare insurance reform is better than no healthcare insurance reform — in a life or death sort of way. So far, the reform bill has stopped insurance companies from denying coverage to our kids because they have pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime caps, which is critically important to those of us with chronic illnesses. Our young adult offspring can now stay on our policies until they turn 26. Standard preventive services are now free for people in new plans. And the list goes on — as long as Congress doesn’t screw it up. Of course, the list would have gone on a lot longer than that, had congressional Democrats stood by their president and voted for the reforms he requested rather than backpedaling in hope of surviving midterm elections, a disloyal tactic that — gosh, what a surprise! — didn’t work out for many of them. Had the Dems accepted their economy-driven fate and voted with some compassion, we could have had an absolutely fabulous reform bill. Nincompoops.

#4

I still like Obama because, true to the historical sequence of suffrage, we had to elect an African American man to the presidency before we could elect a woman. Obama’s presidency means women are up next. Damn time.

#5

I still like Obama because unlike Clinton or George W., Obama will make sure Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) goes away, the military survives, and all those fearful heterosexuals can continue to self-perpetuate. And he’s aligned with a majority of the public, who poll consistently at almost 60 percent in favor of allowing gays to serve openly. (I wonder which polls McCain is reading.) Also, although DADT wasn’t the first thing on Obama’s agenda and he is too conservative on same-sex marriage, unlike the trepidatious men I know, Obama gives full-frontal same-sex hugs. And if that doesn’t do it for you, think about those 2008 candidates. Can you picture any of them posting a video message to gay kids to tell them “It Gets Better”? Nope, not one of them did, but Obama did, and I’d give him a full-frontal hug for that.

#6

I still like Obama because, after the battering midterm elections and in the throes of a lame duck session, he isn’t hunkered down licking his wounds, trying to stay out of the line of fire, deflecting his frustration to the hostility of Call of Duty: Black Ops or some equally bloody war-making game. No, he is out in the field, trying to get things done despite the opposition, such things as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which should have been as easy “Yes” for the Senate; he is calling the Republicans and the Democrats on their fruitless behavior; he is leading, not posing for reality television with the sickening satisfaction of a recreational hunter, à la Sarah Palin.

#7

I still like Obama because he understands we are a nation that cares. We don’t always show it, but in a crisis of need you can count on us to give our money, to give our time, to clear out our closets and donate all those treasures we really will never use to those who will, to show we care. That’s why the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) is such a great piece of legislation for us: It addresses a long-term and tortured problem, fraught with border-skulking secret agent-wannabes, prejudice and ignorance, and it offers the nation an opportunity to turn all that compassion inward. The DREAM Act provides for the offspring of illegal immigrants, raised but not born in the United States, to become citizens via successful college or military service. The DREAM Act is one of the few wise responses to the great immigration debate to emerge in far too many moons: It tells these kids we care about them, and they need that. Quelle idée!

#8

I still like President Obama because he is not any of the overly-coiffed egos vying for a Republican nod in 2012. He is not Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour or still-tanned Mitt Romney or South Dakota Senator John Thune or outgoing Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee or former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich or former Sarah Palin, who has become a mockery of herself — and she was a distinctly undistinguished public figure to begin with.

#9

And, I still like President Obama because, well, okay, I admit it! I like President Obama because he is African American — and I am an anti-racist pig. Slave owners five or six generations ago, my family celebrated his success and wept at the terrible and wonderful significance of his election. The African American rental car worker at the airport the next morning celebrated and wept with me. My friends and I celebrated and wept while watching the inauguration. And still I celebrate and weep for my president. This is an unappreciative country he leads. Oh, Obama is not liberal enough for me — no one who can be elected president would be — and I could join the fray and rail endlessly about the things I don’t like, but he is making progress on many of the issues that are important to me. He is making as much progress as Congress, his own party and politics allow. And for that I like him, still.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at the OB Rag.

White House White Board

Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, discusses the President Obama’s compromise framework on tax cuts, unemployment insurance and job creation.

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.

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.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Heat roils across my hill as I step into the dog days of summer, plunge into the pool and surface into a shimmer of my youth. The hours barely passed then, as we sought the morning’s flickering shade, splayed under the swaying arms of weeping willows. The grass cooled and tickled, and when the breeze stilled, when dew abandoned the ground and bedecked our brows, when boredom prevailed, we scooted on elbow, heel and ass to peek up just past the edge of the willow, to spy pictures in the sky, to find fancy piled upon fancy in shades of white and blue and wonder. Drifty, dreamy images fluttered by on tendrils of hot air and moisture, visions of summers to come. Now, they are visions of summers past. Vague recollections entice others, memories evoke memories, and I succumb to the warm wave of reminiscence. …

At Tydings-on-the-Bay, the family seeks respite from Baltimore’s stinking markets and steamy Southern Baptist socials. The season’s heaven is as hot as hell, so my father’s mother swims in the early morning sun, the rising light, the silence of sleeping progeny. Her ears fill with the water of two hundred fifty years of fishermen’s traps, floating battles of wits and finance, sunken souls. Framed by dusty lace and handprints, she returns from the edge of land, ankle-deep in the pine needles of last season’s hopes and sighs. She pulls back moth-wing coverlets to wake us for breakfast and draws us from bed with the scent of frying scrapple, grits and green tomatoes. We pray for her watermelon rind pickle as she repositions the tortoiseshell combs that hold her endless hair in place and her world together. …

Harmony buzzes — a chorus of lawn mowers, insects and low flying planes. The grass is yet moist with tears of another day’s passing, another day closer to replacing steamed crabs and corn on the cob with brown bag lunches at the big kids’ school. But for now, summer flowers play pub to bees and lipstick to girls who yearn to be women. We dress in fairy gowns of weeping willow and woven clover, with tomato breasts and berry-stained nails, and we smoke cornhusks when no one watches from the kitchen window. We hide along a stream’s bank, escaping plebeian Cheerios, taunting big brothers, demands to be something other than our dreams. We imagine gossamer barges and honeyed rosebuds, the grace and wisdom that will one day be ours. …

Inner tubes with six-pack anchors voyage across a watering hole. Once boys and girls, now barely adults, we plot the world’s salvation: Love and revolution are the answer — or is it revolutionary love? This is our wholesome debate as cows bellow to the music of a generation wading through sparkling ripples of change. We feast on homemade cheese, the sprouts of provocative vision, the final summer of our youth. We dive to the murky bottom one last time and surface with the muck from which our species first emerged. It oozes between our fingers and we know the very world is in our hands. …

Wafts of ocean breath curl round limbs entwined in sweltry sand. We draw long strokes of air and each other, tremble at the touch of fingertips, the sun, the lees of a million million waves, the ebb and flow of unanimity. Tears mingle and meander the joy and sorrow between us. Romance has blown in before a ferry of tourists, binoculars perched on the ship’s rail searching for secrets, cameras poised to frame history — but will we have one? Passion crosses over them like an angel over blood-marked doors and alights dangerously in our lovers’ arms as we crest with the waves. And by summer’s end, all evidence, save the love, of a couple walking hand-in-hand is shifted by the tides to someone else’s strand. …

We watch the glue of an inflamed mob bubbling beneath the sky-high images of Hitler and Obama and Lenin. The three are falsely strung together by practiced loathing, the vitriol of glib puppets who toss the masses bonbons of fear like cheap Mardi Gras beads — in hope of bare-breasted adulation. The mob feasts on the ephemera their idols spew with such self-serving vengeance — dark accusations that evaporate in the sun but linger in unquestioning minds, calls to arms amputated by ignorance, dried tea leaves that swirl out of reach on the hot air of hate. …

And I look back to earth. The quest for grace, the harmony of hopeful discourse, the rhythmic balance of unsullied tides, the common embrace of responsibility for our future — are they such arcane notions? I finger the ancient tortoiseshell combs and wonder if in this time they can hold the world together.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Billboard photo courtesy of Bob Fisher, KRIB.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

The volume of campaign collateral littering my mailbox confirms that Tuesday 08 June is indeed California’s primary election: I’m buried in the noxious stuff. So far, our mixed-party household has received fifty-eight pieces of propaganda from candidates, special-interest ballot measure sponsors and for-profit slate-mailing scoundrels who promote whichever campaigns are willing to pay (one of the truly heinous banes of democracy … as are many candidates). And every piece of the dogmatic toilet paper is urging us to vote as its propagators see fit.

For your disgus— ah, entertainment, I’ve selected a few choice examples.

Let’s start with Joel Anderson. A seated assemblyman, Joel wants to fill Fallbrook’s termed-out State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth’s homophobic shoes. The candidate sent us nine pieces of propaganda explaining why “Liberals Hate Joel Anderson.” He apparently considers this a stellar endorsement.

Yet, I’m a liberal and I don’t know enough about him to hate him. Yet.

I reviewed his pieces for some redeeming virtue and read that he “took the fight to terrorists.”

“Cool,” I thought, “he’s a vet, just like my dear husband!” But I searched and searched, and Joel reports neither military service nor battlefield contractor status, which means he in fact did not see the armed conflict most reasonable people would have interpreted his message as suggesting.

I feel jilted, Joel. You try to woo me to your camp and then you spurn me with deception. I hope no one who really did take the fight to the terrorists gets her or his battle-hardened hands within reach of your wannabe-warrior neck. But, because I’m not such a bad person for a liberal, I’ll help you out a little by hiding your misleading brochures from my infantryman husband. After that, you’re on your own, buster. Time to atone.

Oh — there is a clincher: Joel quotes Glen Beck, whom he mistakenly identifies as a talk show host, but who is actually an alien televangelist fleeing scandal in a galaxy far, far away. Glen says of Joel, “I wish there were more people like you. Thank you, sir, for getting it.” I wonder who got what from whom. …

As for us, we got plenty of propaganda from Proposition 16 sponsors — enough to paper the powder room. At first glance it seems an easy “Yes.” Who wouldn’t want to “Protect Our Right to Vote” — the propaganda’s claim?

The power industry, that’s who. The very manipulators who brought us the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the perpetrators of ever-increasing utility rates exceeded only by their profits, want voters to believe that they are trying to help us.

But, if you read the teensy print — that plain-black stuff they bury at the bottom of their star-spangled propaganda so folks won’t notice it — you’ll see that Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is financing Prop 16. This is because PG&E wants to prevent public utility providers (as in “nonprofits”) from competing with them (as in “profit pigs”).

What is most gross about Prop 16 is that PG&E is usurping our citizen ballot initiative process to protect their monopoly from public utilities. That is, this huge honking corporation is using the very tool the voters adopted in 1911 to stop big business from controlling our state, and PG&E’s Prop 16 would amend our California Constitution to require a two-thirds vote for public entities, such as municipalities, to become energy providers.

And there’s one more dirty trick PG&E pulled: They slapped a bunch of Democratic candidates’ mugs on a slate-mailer endorsing Prop 16, which the Democrats oppose. Although it happens every election cycle, this is really bad form, buckos. PG&E, you are dirty rotten mendacious bastards! And even I am surprised by who agrees with me — check out this list!

Next to PG&E’s cynicism, the slate of four Christian attorneys who want to be judges seems almost mainstream: Craig Candelore, Harold Coleman Jr., Larry “Jake” Kincaid and Bill Trask are on a mission from God to run for San Diego County Superior Court judgeships.

Under the red-white-and-blue banner of BetterCourtsNow.com, the four candidates seem, well, red-white-and-blue. What they fail to reveal to site visitors is that God told them to run. You’d think with an endorsement like that, they’d be blasting it to the heavens.

Could it be they are suffering a crisis of faith? But sins of omission are still sins, so we can only hope they let God out of the closet before Tuesday. Or maybe they’ll call on their backer, El Cajon Gun Exchange, to nudge voters out to the polls.

There are a couple other little agenda items they also fail to share on the website, including their ultimate goal of a Christian takeover of government at every level and their opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

That’s a hell of an agenda, boys, but I have to warn you: My invisible friend told me not to vote for you all.

We’ll have to wait until Tuesday night to see whose deity wins. In the meantime, I can at least be thankful for the free TP.

Love,
K-B

The League of Women Voters operates a great searchable source of nonpartisan candidate and ballot measure information: SmartVoter.org.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt