Gay Marriage, Lite....

Hmmmm.... my question is whether same-sex teaching was a good complaint to bring before a federal judge. Of course, in Massachusetts and a couple of other states gay marriage and/or other types of co-habitation are legal and probably should and will be legal everywhere eventually, so it is reasonable to assume that the judge had the responsibility to rule as he did. And certainly using the argument of such teaching being a violation of "religious rights" is simply ridiculous! I do wonder who their lawyer was! The only religious "rights" a person has is in the 1st Amendment, ["Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"]. It doesn't say that others must cow-tow to an individual's (or church's) beliefs, but simply that one may have whatever beliefs one wants for himself! It doesn't even say that a parent may bring up her children with certain beliefs! Of course, I guess the Constitution doesn't say a lot of things. So, I think that if the parent(s) really wanted to change the policy rather than make a big political show of it, that it would have been much wiser to protest to the school board! After all, schools are still under local control and school boards can be easily replaced if they don't cater to the will of the local citizenry. I'm certainly not anti-gay, but ‘they' are most certainly a biological anomaly and usually not all that obvious unless one goes out of one's way look for them. Their behavior in society, I think, should be quiet and unobtrusive just as should be the more common heterosexual lifestyle. Personally, I don't like conspicuous sex from anyone, on stage, on a screen or on the street - but I guess I'm not typical, judging by our media which caters to the perverted interests of the masses in order to sell almost anything. For example, I was disappointed when Ellen De Generes announced her homosexuality on the tube several years ago because it had nothing to do with her TV personality - it had to do with her private life, which was her business, not ours. In effect she did it to show off and shock everyone. It was the adult version of sticking your thumbs in your ears, waggling your fingers and sticking out your tongue at someone. She was and is a quick wit and very funny comedienne - just not as, because she showed the world a flaw in her personality which diminished her as a person. I won't comment on Rosie because I had no interest in her stage character to begin with and it wasn't her name or her size because I liked Rosey Greer - the 300 lb linebacker who made needlepoint doilies! Neither she nor 'the Donald' come across as nice people you'd want to know. Anyway, back on topic. I don't think it is necessary to teach small children about sexuality or its social aspects. After all, by the age of seven, I had already learned all about sex from my friends - and they were amazingly accurate. Perhaps sex is better kept in its place through the mysterious silence of grown-ups and teachers. There's plenty of schooltime later on to teach the scary details about diseases associated with sexual malpractice. It doesn't hurt to believe in Santa Claus for a few years. Years ago, I recall when going over my college transcripts that ‘they' determined that I had to take a course called "Family Relations" in order to be mailed an AA degree! I pointed out (to 'they') that I was already married and had two children - to no avail, I had to take the dumb course which taught me that statistically, I'd marry a brown-eyed, raven-haired woman like my mother! My petite blonde blue-eyed wife got a kick out of that! Hmmm... wonder if I'd mentioned that marriage was against my religious beliefs, I could have gotten out of taking the course? U.S. court upholds same-sex teaching to children - Sat Feb 24 BOSTON (Reuters) - A federal judge in Boston has dismissed a suit by two families who wanted to stop a Massachusetts town and its public school system from teaching their children about gay marriage, court documents show. The families last year filed the suit asserting that the reading of a gay-themed book and handing out to elementary school students of other children's books that discussed homosexuality without first notifying parents was a violation of their religious rights. Federal Judge Mark Wolf ruled on Friday that public schools are "entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy." "Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation," he said. He said the courts had decided in other cases that parents' rights to exercise their religious beliefs were not violated when their children were exposed to contrary ideas in school. The complaint filed against the town of Lexington, about 12 miles west of Boston, had said the school had "begun a process of intentionally indoctrinating very young children to affirm the notion that homosexuality is right and normal in direct denigration of the plaintiffs' deeply held faith." The book that sparked the case was "King & King" which tells the story of a crown prince who rejects a bevy of beautiful princesses, rebuffing each suitor until falling in love with a prince. The two marry, sealing the union with a kiss, and live happily ever after. The Lexington school system had said reading the book was not intended as sex education but as a way to educate children about the world in which they live, especially in Massachusetts, the only U.S. state where gays and lesbians can legally wed. A lawyer for the families said they would appeal the ruling, the Boston Globe reported on Saturday.

Children: US at bottom of list....

Well, we're at the bottom of the list for health care so it figures that we'd be at the bottom of the list for child care. I'll bet that we're also at the bottom of the list for average middle class affluence.

I think all of these problems stem from a system which is controlled by wealth, power and a lack of compassion for fellow humans. It harkens back to the outmoded ‘divine right of kings' which was particularly strong in our English ancestry and which evolved into a reverence for aristocracy right down to the Victorian era a mere hundred or so years ago. My grandmother and mother were Victorians who considered themselves a bit above the common herd.

As a youth, I recall that we deplored the tragic poverty of most people living in the cities of South America, for example, where a few families controlled the national economies and production facilities of each country. They lived with immense wealth while their workers lived in squalor.

Today, our national policy is to squelch any political efforts in South America aimed at improving the lot of the people because it is more profitable to deal with the rich and powerful. In the past we've used the CIA to perform these patriotic tasks.

Unfortunately, it appears from this study, as reported below, those who control our government don't seem to mind having cheap labor and its attendant poverty here at home. If our labor force which is now largely a ‘service force' is not sufficiently educated to do the job - well, we can always send those tasks to India or China where there is a rapidly growing population of well educated and trained workers. It certainly is cheaper to farm the jobs out than to train our own!

Among Rich Countries
U.S. Child Well-Being Poor
But Optimism Prevails
Caitlin G. Johnson, OneWorld US Tue Feb 20

NEW YORK, Feb 20 (OneWorld) - UNICEF is best known for its work on behalf of children in the developing world, but its latest report turns an eye to the well-being of children in 21 wealthy nations including the United States, which ranks second to the bottom overall.

The UNICEF Innocenti Research Center Report Card, "Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries," looks at six dimensions of child well-being: material well-being, health and safety, educational well-being, family and peer relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own perceptions of their well-being.

"[Child well-being] is a bell weather for where we'll end up in the global market 20 years from now--more than, say, how we're spending our money in other areas, and what we're doing in
Iraq and Afghanistan. It impacts our global security," says Laura Beavers, research associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which sponsors the Kids Count project to track child well-being in each U.S. state.

While none of the countries studied can claim "mission accomplished" in securing child well-being in every measurement, the United States fared particularly poorly. It ranked last in health and safety, primarily because of high rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, and deaths from accidents and injuries. The United States also showed significantly higher rates of obesity and overweight teenagers, and even the teen birth rate--which has declined dramatically in the past decade--remains higher than in other rich countries.

Few in the field are surprised by the findings, which are consistent with existing data on child well-being, educational attainment, and poverty. But some children's advocates are greeting the study with surprising optimism.

"It's very nice that it is coming out at this time," says Linda Spears, vice president of corporate communications and development at the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). "I'm more optimistic now than I've ever been that this may help galvanize energy on Capitol Hill and encourage advocates to pay attention."

The data are drawn from two large surveys--an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) international student assessment and a 2001 World Health Organization survey of health behavior in school-age children--and compare averages. The study's authors acknowledge that this creates complications in drawing conclusions for a country as large and stratified as the United States. Smaller, more homogenous countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland received higher marks overall.

Within the United States, the picture is more complex. "It's clear that child well-being has been improving slowly since the 1990s, with a glitch during the recession in the early 2000s," says Harold Leibovitz, director of strategic communications with the Foundation for Child Development.

In particular, the United States is doing better in areas that reflect "cultural values," Leibovitz says, citing the declining teen birth rate, improvements in children's social and emotional health, and their sense of connection to religious groups and communities.

"But in areas that have to do with policy and the government's role in supporting development of children, we have not been doing as well," he says.

America's childhood obesity epidemic, increasing child poverty rates, and an average on-time high school graduation rate of only 70 percent (and as low as 50 percent in at least 11 urban areas) continue to drive down overall child well-being.

"If we had our resources directed in the right way, we wouldn't be where we are. We have the resources to do it, but we haven't had the political will to do it, especially over the last five years," says the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Laura Beavers.

This political climate may be changing. The report comes as states across the country are considering bipartisan approaches to extend health care coverage to more of the nearly 47 million Americans--including 8 million children--who are uninsured. Many are also considering universal pre-kindergarten [as in Arizona] and early learning initiatives.

In Washington, the 110th Congress is working to renew the effective but financially strapped State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and finalizing legislation to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour by 2009. This month, the U.S. Senate has begun to hold meetings to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind education reform act. [What good does it do if it is not funded?]

At the same time, lawmakers are drafting the fiscal year 2008 federal budget, which sets funding guidelines for programs including education, Head Start, child care assistance, juvenile justice programs, public assistance, and health insurance.

"Twenty years ago, we had good ideas and an intuitive sense of what works, but no data and no outcomes for children to say, 'This produces changes,'" says CWLA's Spears. "Now, there are real things for policymakers to latch on to."

The study's authors hope the report will spark discussion--both within and among these countries--about what works, and encourage each country to focus attention on their own children, as they do those in the developing world.

"What we don't want is for everyone to look at the summary ranking table and say, 'The United States is down at the very end, that can't be right' or, 'That's terrible," says David Parker, deputy director of the Innocenti Research Center, which released the study. "This is not about trying to find sensational bottom lines."

Later this year, UNICEF plans to release a comparison of early childhood development, education, and care across the world's wealthier democracies.

The United States is one of two countries that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international treaty that protects children's rights and access to services and under whose mandate the new study was produced. Somalia is the other country that has not ratified the treaty. [Well, we're in good company with a nation 99% Sunni Muslim!]

It does make one want to throw up! Read on..... Like after being unmercifully smeared in his campaign for President by Bush in 2000 * ! And then four years later, becoming Bush's campaign manager for re-election. And then, literally hugging the startled man on stage when Bush ‘won' again. And then, being a hawkish champion of Bush's war despite all of the administration's lies and unconstitutional behavior. Now, McCain comes out with a self-serving denunciation of Donald Rumsfeld as if he were the commander and chief and solely for not winning a war which should never have been fought in the first place! Where has he been? He certainly can't use the excuse of 20-20 vision and hindsight! Too many of us saw the truth very early on and have not been surprised by the result. The only time McCain has ever done anything right politically is when he went against his own party and joined with Senator Feingold to present a bill for campaign finance reform! He was almost excommunicated for that! The Republicans even tried to tie McCain to Soros, ** a hated socialist who got his vast wealth the same way that Republicans do, except that he is ‘giving it back' through ‘Soros philanthropies' that promote democracy and anti-poverty internationally! Isn't that what Bush is trying to do in Iraq? Hmmm - maybe not. McCain: Rumsfeld was one of the worst By BRUCE SMITH, Associated Press Writer BLUFFTON, S.C. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Monday the war in Iraq has been mismanaged for years and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be remembered as one of the worst in history. "We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement — that's the kindest word I can give you — of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war," the Arizona senator told an overflow crowd of more than 800 at a retirement community near Hilton Head Island, S.C. "The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously." McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, complained that Rumsfeld never put enough troops on the ground to succeed in Iraq. "I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," McCain said to applause. The comments were in sharp contrast to McCain's statement when Rumsfeld resigned in November, and failed to address the reality that President Bush is the commander in chief. "While Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service," McCain said last year when Rumsfeld stepped down. On a two-day campaign swing in South Carolina, McCain fielded questions from the crowd for more than an hour and said the United States can succeed in Iraq with additional troops and a new strategy. McCain has been a strong proponent of using more troops and favors Bush's increase of some 21,500 U.S. forces in the nearly four-year-old war. "I have been saying for 3 1/2 years that we would be in this sad situation and this critical situation we are in today," he said. McCain's bid for president was sidetracked in South Carolina in 2000 after a victory in New Hampshire. George W. Bush won the primary here and went on to win the nomination and White House. "In life, one of the worst things you can do is hold a grudge," he said. "I felt the important thing for me to do with my life was to move forward after we lost our race. You have seen other people who have lost who mire themselves in bitterness and self pity. That's not what my life is all about." Some in the crowd were Bush supporters who have not yet decided on a 2008 candidate. "It's too early to say," said Paul Baker, a retiree from Niagara Falls, N.Y., who has lived in South Carolina about four years. "I'm just going to wait it out and see what happens." ////////////////////////////////////////////// * Bush smear of McCain in South Carolina in 2000... [Boston Globe: The anatomy of a smear campaign By Richard H. Davis | March 21, 2004] It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin. Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator. Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign. Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?" //////////////////////////////////////////////////// ** http://tinyurl.com/4q5an Wikipedia: George Soros Soros has been active as a liberal philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa, and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain. Soros' philanthropic funding in Central and Eastern Europe mostly occurs through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names, e.g. the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland. As of 2003, PBS[14] estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion. The OSI says it has spent about $400 million annually in recent years. Notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, worldwide efforts to repeal drug prohibition laws, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU). The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI. According to the National Review [15] the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart. She is a controversial lawyer who has defended terrorists in court, and was sentenced to 21/3 years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support." In September 2006, Soros departed from his characteristic sponsorship of democracy building programs, pledging $50 million to the Jeffrey Sachs-led Millennium Promise to help eradicate extreme poverty in Africa. Noting the connection between bad governance and poverty, he remarked on the humanitarian value of the project.[16] He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University in 1991. Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.

The Italians are upset with us....

Based upon the following article, it seems that the Italians are getting just about as anti-American as are the French! I understand that if we are going to police the world - for its own good, of course.... then we have to have bases located at various strategic locations whether most of the world likes it or not.

After all, as the Republicans keep on saying, "If we don't fight ‘em over there, then they'll fight us here at home!" Actually, in a guerilla war I don't see the logic since it can be fought anywhere at any time.

I do wonder why ‘they' (you pick the group) don't like us. I can't believe that it is simple jealousy because we Americans are so much smarter and wealthier than they are - unless they think perhaps that we stole their wealth through the invention of Capitalism rather than simply taking advantage of it before they could.

I can certainly understand the people of Vicenza who don't want an American megabase in their town! Hell, I wouldn't want one here in Kingman, either! The military all belong way out in the middle of some God-awful desert away from people (like the old movie depictions of the French Foreign Legion), you know, places like Texas or Nevada or maybe Colorado Springs, the west wing of the Pentagon.

When stationed in Burlington, VT, I recall that when the locals objected to our military presence, we were paid in cash - two dollar bills! Of course, the town was flooded with the bills so the greed of the local merchants overcame their rantings about GI's roaming their streets. As usual, of course, the parents of the town's virgins didn't have much of a voice at city hall - so we stayed. --- Real good lookin' girls, too! I married one of 'em.

In the case of the Italians, they should ask their government "Puo cambiarmi questa...?" It really ain't our problem - unless we would like to have a better international image...?

Italians protest over U.S. base expansion
By Lisa Jucca

VICENZA, Italy (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Italians under heavy police guard marched on Saturday through the city of Vicenza to protest against the expansion of a U.S. military base that has divided the center-left government

Leftists who last year voted for Prime Minister Romano Prodi, an Iraq war opponent, turned out in droves to decry his approval for U.S. plans to expand the military base in Vicenza, home to the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

Pacifists waved rainbow-striped peace banners while some protesters carried anti-American slogans like "Yankees go Home" as they marched through the city and gathered in a main square.

"There is no reason to have this base here," said Antonio Faitta, a 25-year-old gardener who traveled from Genoa.

Prodi appealed to demonstrators to refrain from violence, following warnings from the interior minister that the protest march which began shortly after 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) could attract people "hostile to the forces of law and order."

The U.S. embassy had warned Americans to steer clear of the small northern Italian city of 115,000, where officials also shut schools normally open on Saturday as a precaution.

But the protests were peaceful. Police estimates pegged the crowd at more than 50,000 people. The leftist Communist Refoundation Party (Prc), part of the ruling coalition, boasted the number could top 100,000 and said Prodi should "listen up."

The base expansion is the latest headache for Prodi, who has faced revolts by his broad leftist coalition partners on everything from gay rights to the budget and the presence of Italian peacekeepers in Afghanistan.

"Today, Prodi has been given a vote of no confidence by his own majority. He should step down," said Isabella Bertolini of the center-right opposition Forza Italia party.

LIGHTNING ROD
The demonstration has served as a lightning rod for anti-U.S. sentiment in a country where judges have ordered CIA agents and a U.S. soldier to stand trial for kidnapping and murder.

A Milan judge charged the CIA agents on Friday with abducting a Muslim cleric in Milan in a covert operation and flying him to Egypt. The U.S. soldier was charged on February 7 with murdering an Italian secret agent in Iraq, although both governments have described the 2005 shooting as an accident.

All will almost certainly be tried in absentia, since Washington is not expected to hand them over.

"I don't want any more Americans here and I don't want a new base. They should just leave us alone," said Pucci Mori, a resident of Vicenza, who lives near the proposed base expansion.

"Wherever they go in the world, Americans cause trouble."

The Pentagon wants to double the size of the base to unite its 173rd Airborne Brigade and expand its 2,750 military personnel to 4,500.

At present, the rapid reaction unit is divided among the base at Vicenza, about 400 km (250 miles) north of Rome, and bases at Bamburg and Schweinfurt in Germany.

The new barracks would be on the other side of the city from the existing one. That has raised worries about new roads to handle military traffic linking the two parts, loss of green space and strains on public services.

Residents fear it could even put Vicenza in danger.

"The people of Vicenza are concerned. The base would be in the heart of the city and in the case of a military conflict it could become a target," said Nobel literature laureate Dario Fo.

A Woman for President?

A female cousin proclaimed she wouldn't vote for Hillary because she was too strident!......

Hmmmm... More strident than, for example, Senator Biden who is more than willing to call a spade a spade?

I think that the problem is that women by nature have screechy voices (I know, sister Dee - you don't screech) - especially if they get excited. I'm sure that it served them well when we all lived in caves - but they've had to live with it in modern society due to their physiology and it has been a hard thing for them to control - certainly not instinctive and very effective in handling children -- the alternative to using a club!

Now, I don't think I've ever heard Hillary screech on TV but I've read that she used to screech at Bill on occasion - maybe she should have screeched a bit louder!

But more seriously, as usual, we are now the most backward of the advanced nations on this planet. Our empire has peaked - as all empires have in history - it should be expected. We have become excessively Christian of the more advanced nations of the world which have become more pragmatic and have discarded ideologies and beliefs which are no longer believable nor practical. We've sold out to a rigid economic system which promotes greed at the expense of the welfare of citizens nor compassion for those less advanced in the world - we could bend a little, I think.

Thus even though the world elected a black to run the United Nations and his replacement is a Korean, we in the U.S. have yet to elect a nigger! (I use the term to show why we won't elect one). And we won't elect a woman because she is merely chattel in the Bible and thus no good Christian believes that a woman is capable of leading a ‘great nation'!

This is despite the fact that many women in history have led nations very effectively throughout history! – such as Queen Elizabeth I who, for example, established the first national welfare system and required citizens to establish surnames! Seems she had a civilizing effect on the English barbarians!

The Holocaust in Perspective...

Hillary presented a speech to a large Jewish group in NY mentioning the Holocaust and problems with Iran.

The speech caused me to wonder a bit about genocide and war - especially the most terrible war in human history, WWII and how it compares with the Jewish genocide.

I am peeved at Jewish politics here in the U.S. and most certainly with the arrogance of Israel toward her only real friend in the world. But, unlike the bombastic President of Iran, I have no doubt that the ‘holocaust' happened and was a terrible thing during a terrible time in a terrible world and I certainly don't hate Jews!

So, not to put down the ‘holocaust' but rather to put it in perspective, I found a well done website containing graphs and statistics on wars the U.S. has participated in since the Revolution. http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/casualties_of_war.htm
OR: http://tinyurl.com/yow8xf

It does not address the ‘holocaust' directly but I'm sure the six million Jews irrationally murdered by Hitler's madness are included in the civilian statistics.

The bottom line is that World War II cost over twenty-three million military lives and thirty-one million civilian lives which comes to fifty-five million human beings for a war which should not have happened and achieved very littl. That number is approximately the entire population of England or France or Italy - take your choice.

Most noteworthy among civilian deaths during WWII, we find that 10 million Chinese civilians were killed in WWII by the Japanese. There were 7.7 million Russian civilians killed by the Germans during that war and 6 million Polish persons, about one in five, were annihilated - probably many of the latter were Jews.

To put those horrible numbers in greater perspective - if possible, ‘only' 62,000 civilians were killed in Great Britain despite the nightly rain of German "V" type rockets on cities during the blitz. And even Japan lost ‘only' 300,000 civilians as a result of our incendiary bombing of Tokyo and the atomic destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

As my favorite Civil War general, Sherman once said, "War is Hell!" So, I do wish that the Jews would put to rest their gnashing and flailing over something which happened almost seventy years ago over a war which is virtually forgotten by the rest of the world. They certainly weren't alone in misery. ...AG]