April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Debra

Cut and Run Government

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George Lakoff gives a great explanation of how the right has spent years, money and used “think tanks”

Because they’ve put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that. [There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s.]

And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.

to bring about a framing much like the Newspeak of Orwell’s 1984

The novel includes an appendix, The Principles of Newspeak [3], written in the style of an academic essay. The appendix describes the development of Newspeak, and explains how the language is designed to standardise thought to reflect the ideology of Ingsoc; that is, by making “all other modes of thought impossible”.

There still exists to this day a literary debate about whether the appendix should be read as part of the narrative. Because it is written in third person past tense these people argue that: for whoever wrote the appendix, Newspeak, and the totalitarian government, is a thing of the past.(Atwood [4], Benstead [5]).

An example of this framing

The phrase “Tax relief” began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush’s inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for “relief.” For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add “tax” to “relief” and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.

snip

Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there’s an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists — vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues — you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don’t. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law.

snip

It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It’s about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn’t pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity

In the interest of starting some reframing, I have started with an oft used term in the U.S. “Cut and Run“. Currently it is used as a pejorative against those who want to take the proper course of action and get out of Iraq.

Before the Bush wannabes start throwing this term around parliament to defend their insistence on staying in Afghanistan, I suggest we show it as a real term.

What has this government done? It has cut numerous programs which help people, which tax dollars have gone to support recognizing that in a democracy everyone’s voice gets to be heard.

What I am proposing is that we start a campaign on Harpers cut and run government. You can use the above graphic or create your own. You can link to the list or post it on your blog or site.

Lets start some “framing” of our own.

The war on women

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Nicaragua has approved a sweeping new law banning abortions, even in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

Poland debates constitutional change that could increase abortion restrictions

Should a woman be compelled to carry a baby to term when doctors tell her it will be born with no brain? Should a pregnant woman forgo potentially life-saving medical treatment for the sake of the baby she is carrying? Should a woman be forced to give birth to a child conceived in rape? Yes, yes and yes, says Leslee Unruh, the guiding light of South Dakota’s anti-abortion activists

How nice that there are people who think they should make the decision as to what another person does with their body.

In researching wage disparity it often comes up that given the same set of circumstances women and mens wages are fairly equal. Well forcing women to bear children pretty much eliminates the choice to have a similar set of circumstances.

The same people that argue for these laws also fight to make contraception illegal and consider rape a womans fault.

It is big news right now that a Muslim cleric preached that ‘loose’ women are at fault for rape, but make no mistake that same message has rung from the pulpits of Christian churches and they bear equal blame and responsibility for the messages they are giving the sons and daughters of their congregations.

The people also want to do away with welfare programs, daycare programs, advocacy programs. How exactly are these children to be raised?

What kind of life if any is that 11 year old pregnant through incest going to have? What school will she attend? Who will care for the child? How will you piece her body and psyche back together?

How do you look a woman in the face whose pregnancy is killing her and tell her that because her disease is caused by pregnancy you do not value her life and will not treat her? How do you tell any other children she might have that they will no longer have a mother because some people thought they had the right to legislate her to literal death?

At what point do we recognize that this is not a right to fetal life issue, but a full fledged war on women? A war which seeks to have a womans life under the full and total control of those making the laws and running the country and you can be damned sure that given this course none of those people will be women.

5 things about me

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Here’s an explanation:

The above is a rather spooky practice, “people collecting”, in which you are charged to provide five little-known facts about yourself on your blog, so that writers can have some research material.

tagged by Politics’n’Poetry

  1. I make fantastic bread and possibly the worlds best lasagna
  2. I hate having pictures taken. I’ve never been photogenic and now that I’ve put on weight I refuse to be photographed
  3. I wanted to be a photographer (yes I see the irony) and an activist but ended up a stay at home mother of six. –now that’s a segue–
  4. I have always wanted to own a home but all the money went on the kids.
  5. I once attended a fundamentalist church for a few months because someone I was friends with wanted someone to go with her. I now have an even dimmer view of religion. Not spirituality…religion.

I tag Nikita, Zézette, and Kuri

Where’s a millstone when you need one?

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It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. (Luke (ch. XVII, v. 2)

Apparently on that Christ and today’s church would disagree.

Deliver Us From Evil is a film that chronicles the abuses by Father Oliver O’Grady.

He was the closest thing to God they knew. Bob Jyono can still picture the priest he and his wife, Maria, called Ollie, a family friend who often spent the night in their Lodi home, saying his morning prayers with a Bible in his hands.

“And all during the night, he’s molesting my daughter — not molesting, raping her! — at 5 years old,” wails Jyono in “Deliver Us From Evil.” It’s a devastating documentary about Oliver O’Grady, the notorious pedophile priest who sexually abused children, including a 9-month-old baby, in a string of Central California towns for 20 years — and the Catholic bishops who moved him from parish to unsuspecting parish, allegedly covering up his crimes.

The church knew what he was doing and at one point helped him avoid prosecution by telling the police they would move him somewhere there were no children a complete falsehood. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.(perhaps that does not cover lying to protect a pedophile)

Father O’Grady is decidedly unrepentant;

He wears a sly smile as he says what arouses him: “How about children in swimsuits? I’d say, yeah. How about children in underwear? I’d say, yeah. How about children naked? Uh-huh, yeah.”

And the church of course is praying for the hearts and souls of those he hurt. Denouncing him as evil, thanking those who brought his heinous crimes to light…or not..

The film also points to the culpability of church officials, like Mahony, who has been named in numerous civil suits by victims of priestly abuse. “They banked on our silence and our shame,” Jyono said. “That’s how they got away with it for so long.”

snip

In a phone interview with The Chronicle, Tamberg said, “Everyone should be saddened by the kind of emotional and spiritual devastation that these kind of child molesters can wreak on individuals and families. That said, this movie is incredibly biased and omits many facts that would’ve changed the assumption the movie makes.”

The movie, Tamberg added, “is chock full of attorneys and expert witnesses who make millions of dollars every year in abuse litigation against the church. It’s a big advertisement for them.”

What facts could change the assumption that the church knew full well of his activities and allowed them to occur?

Maybe this fact?

The leaked Vatican document proves that under his papacy his deputy Cardinal Radzinger reissued the Vatican directive “Solicitacciones Criminale” of Pope John XXIII instructing Roman Catholic bishops to protect sex pervert pedophile and homosexual and lesbian pedophile priests and nuns at the expense of not protecting the little children whom these criminal perverts destroy. The directive also instructs the protection of clergy who have sex with animals.

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world…but the church not so much…

Mackay channeling Clinton?

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Peter Mackay taking a page from Clinton is continuing to deny what everyone knows to be true.

Now there are calls for his resignation.

Now, instead of calls for an apology, the foreign affairs minister is facing demands for his resignation amid accusations that he lied to Parliament.

Things escalated Wednesday after MacKay flatly denied referring to Stronach — his former girlfriend and a Liberal MP — as a dog in the House of Commons last week.

“I made no derogatory or discriminatory remark toward any member of this House,” a defiant MacKay told the Commons.

“I made no such gesture.”

The incident seems to have lit a fire under opposition parties as they now have finally started putting fire to the feet of this cut and run government.

Liberals and New Democrats, independently of each other, are increasingly on the attack about alleged Tory mistruths beyond this one incident as well. Liberal environment critic John Godfrey, for instance, yesterday accused Environment Minister Rona Ambrose of wilfully misrepresenting the views of organizations and interest groups with respect to their reaction to the Tory green plan unveiled last week. Ambrose has replied that she is accurately reading complimentary passages from press releases issued by the Canadian Lung Association and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Meanwhile, NDP MP Irene Mathyssen (London-Fanshawe) has for the last two days accused the Tories of denying cuts they are purported to be making to the Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative. Mathyssen says the figures are on the government’s own website — the $133 million budget for last year appears as $2 million this year.

Oh what a tangled web we weave……

Photo ID for voting

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The Tories are proposing that Canadians be equipped with photo id before being given their constitutional right to vote

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian voters may have to produce photo identification next time they go to the polls if changes to the electoral law proposed by the Conservative government on Tuesday are passed quickly.

The requirement is one of a series of amendments to the Canada Elections Act introduced in Parliament that aim to reduce voter fraud.

The legislation also calls for political candidates to be allowed to campaign in shopping malls and other areas that have traditionally been off limits.

But given the Conservative government’s minority standing, the changes would need the opposition’s swift approval if they are to be implemented for the next federal vote, widely expected next spring.

“Most Canadians are surprised to hear there is currently no legal requirement for them to have identification to vote,” said Rob Nicholson, minister of democratic reform. “After all, almost every other important activity in society requires

Most Canadians are surprised? Are these Canadians who have never voted?

This is nothing more than another Tory scheme to further disenfranchise those who already have a hard time exercising their legal rights. The poor, the elderly, the homeless, those people least likely vote tory in any case. [Read more…] about Photo ID for voting