Eight False Things The Public “Knows” On Election Day

by D Gregory Smith

And while we’re on the topic of things to think about this election cycle, Dave Johnson puts forth a few of his own, including:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budgetreduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.

 

Read ’em all here.   (Thanks, Wulfgar)

Voting For HIV

by D Gregory Smith

I am a member of NAPWA, the National Association of People With AIDS/HIV.  As a member, I receive their monthly email newsletter, which has a lot of information regarding HIV, tips for self-care, advocacy and political activism. Frank Oldham, the President and CEO had a column this month that really put some things in perspective for me.

It’s been a pretty interesting election year. NAPWA, as a 501(c)(3) charitable corporation, is not permitted to support or oppose individual candidates or political parties, so we can’t name names – but we can share our general observation that some of this year’s candidates would be pretty grand entertainment if there weren’t a real chance they might get elected.

It’s also been one of the nastiest campaign seasons in recent memory, and a lot of us just want it to end and go away. Here are some reasons to get to the polls and vote anyway.

· Defend the Health Care Reform Act.

Imagine a world where insurance companies can’t ask about preexisting conditions and use our answers to deny us coverage or cover us differently! We’ll have to wait until 2014 for full implementation of that, but it’s in the new law, and candidates who will defend the law against attempts to repeal it outright or amend it out of existence deserve our support. So do incumbent candidates who knew they were risking their seats but voted for the bill anyway; they took a big risk for us.

· The next Congress will – or won’t – fund implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.

The Obama Administration’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) seeks to reduce the number of new HIV infections, increase access to care and optimize health outcomes, and reduce HIV-related health disparities. All of which is very good news for people living with HIV. It doesn’t mean much, though, if Congressional funding priorities are being set by folks who think anyone who doesn’t look like them is not the “real America.” Simply by being HIV-positive, we don’t look like them. We don’t want a Congress full of elected representatives chanting, “We shouldn’t be spending money on NHAS, ‘they’ wouldn’t have HIV if ‘they’ hadn’t been doing bad things.”

· The next Congress will set the agenda for young people’s HIV-awareness and prevention education.

We’ve seen the lack of results from abstinence-only curricula. Even the current Congress is gradually moving from ideology-driven abstinence-only approaches to evidence-based, frank sex education, and it is saving the lives of our young people. We don’t want to go back.

· There are critical HIV funding needs right now.

State AIDS Drugs Assistance Programs (ADAPs) are in crisis because of the recession which started in 2008. Programs for HIV-positive people with multiple medical or life issues – homelessness, addiction, mental illness – are also finding funds harder and harder to come by. Find out where your candidates stand on HIV services, and vote for those who support funding for them.

The votes of people living with HIV/AIDS are needed now more than ever before! As the leader of NAPWA and an African-American gay man living with AIDS, I know that so much progress and the fruits of hard-fought battles for our health care, protecting Ryan White Care Act services, and our rights as American citizens are at risk right now!

So let’s be sure to know our candidates and choose well. Next issue (November 5), we’ll look at the election results. Win or lose, we’ll all feel better if we did our research and voted our values.

A Church Adrift

by D Gregory Smith

Peter Steinfels in a thought-provoking piece for Commonweal speaks about the hemorrhaging Catholic Church, the responsibility of the bishops and the reality of social understanding in the pews. He starts out with this:

“In February 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, based on interviews with a representative sample of thirty-five thousand adult Americans, reported that one out of every three adult Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church. If these ex-Catholics were to form a single church, they would constitute the second largest church in the nation.” (emphasis mine)

Definitely worth a read- and don’t skip the comments! (Thanks Cheryl!)

An Excellent Summary

by D Gregory Smith

Jay Stevens offers a well-balanced view of Cowgirlgate over at Left In The West.

Thanks, Jay.

“We Used To Feel Like You”

by D Gregory Smith

“Don’t give up
Cause your life is like a book-
All you got to do is turn the page.
There are friends yet to meet,
There are songs to be sung
There are beautiful sunsets
And battles are won.
There’s love to be found if you just stick around
Don’t give up- your life has just begun.”

Amen.

Buy it here.

White Sulphur Councilman Accused Of Racism

by D Gregory Smith

Homecoming never used to be such a problem when I was a kid- but then there were only white kids in my school.

The Great Falls Tribune reports:

Senior Kody Mondragon and the other 10 homecoming king and queen candidates planned to take the traditional ride in the back of convertibles during the Oct. 8 parade.

But Mondragon said when he tried to climb into the car owned and driven by Councilman Heith Stidham, Stidham refused repeatedly to let him in, saying he couldn’t let someone who looked like Obama ride with him. (emphasis mine)

WTF? Full story here.

Cowgirlgate

by D Gregory Smith

Montana Cowgirl has had a bit of a shitstorm over a man-purse reference involving candidate Roy Brown.

I’ve had a lot of correspondence with Cowgirl over the past few months, and I think she gets it- she’s expressed a willingness to be educated AND expressed remorse at her regrettable comment. Cowgirl has never presented herself as anything other than an ally in the struggle for LGBT Montanan’s rights. She’s entitled to a little tongue-in-cheek humor as far as I’m concerned- and I’m not naive enough to believe that everybody or even anybody agrees with me.

Pseudonymous commentary is almost as old as writing itself. It has it’s place. She’s not doing her job the way I would do it, but there’s got to be room for her here. It takes all kinds doing their jobs (as they see them) the best they can- and I believe it’s my job to try first to educate rather than picking up the “Offended” stick and responding in outrage.

There are a lot of us out there, great people who are passionate about the same issues- activists, bloggers, reporters, letter writers, commenters, etc. We won’t always agree, but we all deserve to be heard and, conversely, to try and respectfully hear each other. that means taking responsibility for our words and actively working to educate each other about the power of some of those words.

It’s not a perfect system, but we can make it better by first calmly pointing out rather than screaming in outrage- unless of course, the calm pointing is continually or habitually ignored….

Then it’s on.

Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case That Made History

by D Gregory Smith

On the heels of Yesterday’s Spirit Day (wearing purple in honor of LGBT teens who have committed suicide and expressing solidarity with others who struggle) I watched Bullied.

If you haven’t seen this movie, I highly recommend it.

If you’d like to own this movie, you can do so for free through Teaching Tolerance.
And to maybe do some good, pass this on to an educator in your community….

Self-Torture

by D Gregory Smith

I owe a lot of my peace and contentment in this world to one particular insight:
Much of what makes me suffer begins in my own mind.

It comes from overthinking: taking an issue and blowing it completely out of proportion by obsessing on it, or looking at the painful past and re-inflicting myself with the pain it caused. Often, I’m creating more pain than ever really happened or is even possible in any real situation. I have come to realize that if I want to feel helpless and/or scared on purpose, I simply have to look at my regretful past or create an impossible future.

This kind of thinking is either untrue or unprovable. Period.

In other words, it’s a waste of time- and yet we talk ourselves into believing those untrue, unprovable thoughts.

How much of thinking is completely in the moment? Not much, it turns out. Most of us are either thinking about the past, worrying about the future, or constructing scenarios that may or may not happen in order to “be prepared”. How much energy is lost in this? It seems more efficient to me to stay as completely in the moment as possible, to practice awareness of the present and thinking on my feet in order to skillfully and purposefully respond to whatever happens. That means taking ownership of my thoughts and directing them, not vice-versa. It is my mind after all. I can teach it not to torture me. In so doing, I am teaching myself not to torture me….

Having said that, I know it’s not that easy. It takes work. I don’t succeed in this as often as I’d like, but I’m improving. I’m becoming more successful at staying in the moment with meditation, intentional breathing and daily reminders that I’ve strategically placed in my daily life. Side effects include a drop in stress and a lift in happiness and serenity. Loving what is- simply by acknowledging it and staying with it.

I love the following quote by Fulton Oursler:

‎”Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves- regret for the past and fear for the future.”

Time to get off that cross- it’s not my place.

New Scooby Mix

by D Gregory Smith

 

From my favorite DJ:

“My latest mix was inspired by my brother getting married. As I was making the best man toast to my little brother, it really dawned on me just how essential of an ingredient the right to marry is to what we so cherish as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
So here’s a toast to one day soon, marriage equality and the “Pursuit of Happiness” for all… 

Download continuous single file: http://www.mediafire.com/?dy7hdihzd9910y5

Cheers,
John (DJ Scooby)”