The Good News: Obama’s backbone is not a problem.

The bad news: His politics, or ideology, is.

Just the other day, the Republican House Speaker, in an unprecedented move, refused a request from the President of the United States to deliver a speech to Congress and the American people. The Obama White House relented after just a few hours.

Fresh on the humiliating retreat, the president has abdicated his duties once more. He announced his administration will not enforce portions of the Clean Air Act that sought to limit and cut asthma-inducing ozone pollution, potentially saving thousands of lives each year.

Over on CNN, Mr. Martin published an informative analysis of President Obama’s appeasement policy towards his political opponents and its effect on his once-enthusiastic supporters. But he missed the possibility that it’s not appeasement at all. There’s no reason to fight when what you and I see as a “loss” is an acceptable outcome.

See, most liberals still think Obama’s one of them, at heart, and Tea Kettles take it a couple light-years further. They’re both wrong.

Obama is just Joe Lieberman in disguise.

Biologists have shown for the first time that serotonin, a chemical known to regulate sexual behaviors in both mice and men, determines whether male mice prefer to mount males or females. The study was ingenious and worth reading in its own right, but even more consequential is the moral dilemma it poses for anti-gay and equality rights activists.

Of course, all of this discussion assumes serotonin has the same effect in men as it does in mice, a reasonable hypothesis that nevertheless requires experimental proof.

In the United States, most people are Christians, and most anti-gay activists are Christians. Many of them base their beliefs on their bible (the end of this article discusses some of those beliefs).

But if too much or too little serotonin leads to homosexuality, then reasonable people could question why a deity so against the practice would allow males of so many species to be born with a condition that renders them all but certain to adopt  that practice. And why has that god not told these God-loving people that it is a chemical, not a choice?

Why have they been so wrong?

Equality rights supporters are not off the hook either. For one thing, some religious regimes will almost certainly start “treating” gay men, if not women, with serotonin, just like the way researchers turned gay mice into heterosexuals. Although less common, support may also exist in this country among some of the more virulently anti-gay groups.

Should discriminatory sentiments not decrease significantly or quickly enough, some gays who have not come out of the closet may try to change themselves through “voluntary” self-injections of the chemical.

Urgent actions need to be taken immediately in this area of bioethics.

Christian Justification

Christians who hate gays often cite the following passage:

“If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13)

The problem is that three verses before that passage is one that calls for execution of people who curse their parents.

“For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him.” (Leviticus 20:9)

Another passage is often used to justify discrimination.

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22)

The same book, though, called eating shellfish (such as shrimps), an abomination, not once, not twice, but three separate times.

“But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you.” (Leviticus 11:10)

“They (shellfish) shall be an abomination to you; you shall not eat their flesh, but you shall regard their carcasses as an abomination.” (Leviticus 11:11)

“Whatever in the water does not have fins or scales; that shall be an abomination to you.” (Leviticus 11:12)

You can read more about it on fallwell.com.

Here’s a horrific story about a Libyan woman who barged into a hotel where foreign journalists were having breakfast, to tell the tale of being kidnapped and gang-raped by government forces. Journalists who tried to prevent her from being forcibly taken away by government “minders” were assaulted.

Let the record state that Republicans, conservatives, etc, were largely opposed to intervening in Libya and fighting the bloodthirsty Qadhafi.

Update: The Guardian’s posted a video clip of the incident.

Photo used under Creative Commons license

Explosions, fires, exposed fuel rods. We are almost impotent watching crisis after crisis unfold at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The picture coming out is one of a loosening grip on the disaster. At the time of this writing, there are reports that spent fuel rods at the No. 4 reactor may reach “criticality” again and restart a chain reaction. The consequences would be far deadlier than at the other reactors, because these rods are stored outside containment structures, after being taken offline before the earthquake hit.

All that stopping the plant from going nuclear is 50-70 workers who have stayed, as TEPCO, the power company with a shady past and present, pulled out the other 750 workers. They have been dubbed the “Fukushima 50″, and they accept the probability of death: without protective equipment, one may not last more than ten minutes outside these reactors. The situation is so dangerous than anyone within 20 miles has been told to leave.

As CBS News described in that report, a Japanese official said his friend, one of the Fukushima 50, has told him that he was ready to die, that it was his job.

Numerous well-meaning folks have urged people to pray for these self-sacrificing heroes. Well, why won’t a god who can create a whole universe not lift a finger in these critical times?

We know, hopefully, what we would do with the ability to stop the nuclear reactions. And those 50 heroes are trying their human best. The question has been mangled by centuries of theologians, but comes down to this: would you? Ultimately, the justification is that there is some grand plan we do not understand.

Scrap the plan. Don’t try to justify preventable deaths, or you can justify anything. Only religions can make someone do that. We are better than that. The Fukushima 50 have shown we can be better than god. Remember what they are doing as you go about the rest of your life, because they may not have a chance to go about theirs.

Update: The danger of fatality may have been proved, as Japan abandons stricken nuke plant over radiation, but not before two workers went missing in a blast.

The Wisconsin State Senate has authorized the arrest of the Wisconsin 14, who are self-exiled from their home state to prevent the destruction of labor unions in the state and across the country. Whatever one thinks of unions or these legislators, the right to withhold participation in government is a fundamental right of a democracy.

But the Republican Party, along with the Tea Party and their corporate supporters, have now criminalized that right. If any of the Democratic holdouts return, they will be arrested and become perhaps the first overt political prisoners of modern-day America.

And yet, the national Democratic Party has stayed silent. Now that Ohio has fallen into red hands, it will lose the presidential election in 2016, if not earlier. Soon, it will be the national legislators’ turn to be threatened with arrest. But do they care? Perhaps they will have officially switched parties by then.

The irony overflows. If government is an evil, then shut it down. Instead, Republican and Tea Party have chosen to resort to anything imaginable, including locking up political opponents, to keep the government running. Talk about Big Brother–it’s more like Big Brother in Jail.

In case you missed it, political opponents can now be made into political prisoners. Welcome to Fascist USA.

The Ohio state senate has voted to ban strikes by public workers and establish penalties for those who do participate in walkouts. Unionized workers can negotiate wages, hours, and certain work conditions, but not health care, sick time, or pension benefits. The bill passed despite the opposition of six Republicans. The bill is not yet law, but that is just a formality: the state house is even more heavily Republican, and the GOP governor is a strong advocate of the bill. Ohio has officially fallen into the red column for the foreseeable future.

As I explained in my previous blog, this fight is labor’s last stand, yet unions have not pulled out all their stops. And the national Democratic Party has practically stood down.

Also today came news that the self-exiled state senators from Wisconsin may be forced to return. The future is very grim.

Scott Walker made clear during the fake Koch phone call his plan to destroy labor unions: drag out the stand-off, tire out the media attention, and be the last one standing. While unions and progressive groups have wakened to the gravity of the situation, they have been unable to gain traction outside their core constituents. According to MoveOn.org’s email Sunday night, 50 thousand people went out to the streets nationwide in capitals across 50 states over the weekend. Yet there remain more than 300 million people in the country. Walker is right: the longer the fight goes on, the weaker his opposition will become. Supporters of unions and workers must expand quickly the war on workers beyond members’ right to collective bargaining, into a genuine movement to reorganize the working class in this country.

[Please see the list of brands that in effect fund the other side in Wisconsin, Ohio, and beyond. Thanks Sandra.]

The right’s audacity comes from decades of union decline, from a high in the 1950s when a third of Americans belonged to unions. The latest figures show more than 93% of private-sector workforce are non-union, and so are 88% in government agencies. That most Americans still oppose the Midwest governor is a fortunate blessing.

Many people (not just Tea Party animals) are asking: “Why should union members have health care when I don’t? Why should they have pensions when my employer took away mine? Why should they health care when I can’t afford treatments after having a heart attack?”

The truth is, neither public employees nor union workers were responsible for the economic meltdown or Ponzi schemes from Madoff to Goldman Sachs. They did not take away millions of jobs, erase thousands of pensions, or make employers and states to eliminate the life-saving vehicle that is health insurance.

Many of the same people upset at the benefits still enjoyed by some union members used to have good jobs, health care, pensions, and all the other trappings of middle class that this country was once built on. The question is not why union members still have them, but “Why don’t you have yours?”

And the answer is that they don’t have a union anymore.

You want more than poverty wages? Join a union. You want health care? Join a union. You want weekends off and not a bankrupted retirement? Join a union.

The only way unions and their supporters can win against Gov. Walker (despite an almost silent Democratic Party) is if they can leverage the power of the millions of angry and deprived workers who do not belong to any unions; if they have the backing of 100% of the private sector workforce, and 100% of public employees.

That means fighting to get them to have everything that union members have. Because if they don’t, they will turn on the ones who do.

This is the labor movement’s last chance. You have a few weeks at most. Organize, or die.