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Watching state legislatures jocky to pass bad laws lately has been like watching the three stooges go through a door. I have come to think there is a secret reality show to determine which state can do the dumbest things.

Tennessee updated the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” The bill passed 28-1.

Arizona has been hard to keep up with lately when it comes to doing dumb things, but many states, including my own, are in the running for the state that can do the dumbest thing. Tennessee has never been on my list, but after the hand holding bill, and recently passing a creationism bill.

I thought we should find a standard of measurement, so I chose SAT scores. Then there should be a dumbest law category. Finally a more artistic appraisal of happiness indicators:

General indicators of happiness:

http://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/lifestyle/smartest-dumbest-states

Worst SAT Scores:

http://www.mamapop.com/2011/09/how-smart-or-dumb-is-your-state.html

Dumbest State Laws:

http://www.stupidlaws.katfan.com/

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh has written a fascinating essay on the Arab Spring from an Arab perspective. Most Americans know that Arabs live under dictators, but have no idea that the brutal tyrants are often under our protection. So our leaders have to publically pretend to support popular democratic movements while, at the same time, destroying any hope that they will actually be effective. This is usually true whether the leader is Republican or Democrat.

“Caught off-guard by the initial wave of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, the US and its allies struck back with a vengeance. They employed a number of simultaneous tactics to sabotage the Arab Spring. These included (1) instigating fake instances of the Arab Spring in countries that were/are headed by insubordinate regimes such as those ruling Iran, Syria and Libya; (2) co-opting revolutionary movements in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen; (3) crushing pro-democracy movements against “friendly” regimes ruling countries such as Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia “before they get out of hand,” as they did in Egypt and Tunisia; and (4) using the age-old divide and rule trick by playing the sectarian trump card of Sunnis vs. Shias, or Iranians vs. Arabs.”

Please read this essay with an open mind. Look honestly at the possibility that you have been the unwitting citizen of a ruthless corporately driven empire. Then consider what the rest of your life would be like if you became a citizen of the whole world. The first step in gaining that citizenship for anyone anywhere is to stop believing the propaganda of their own nation no matter which nation that is.

“Liberal” and “Conservative” are places on an arc. But if the entire circle is a cut off from sanity and the masses of humanity, then it is not enough to choose between those places in the continuum. One must step off that circle, and join the whole human race.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/13/whatever-happened-to-the-arab-spring/

This may seem unbelievable if you aren’t from the South. For us down here it feels as familiar as it does sad. The head of the Southern Baptist Convention Public Policy was quoted as criticizing black pastors who called for justice in the Trayvon Martin case.

Richard Land is here quoted saying that President Obama “poured gasoline on the racialist fires” when he said that if he had a son it would look like Trayvon. Further, he said that people are justified in deeming young black men as threatening because a black man is “statistically more likely to do you harm than a white man.”

Land said he did not regret the comments. “I have no doubt, based on the emails I have received, that a vast majority of Southern Baptists agree with me,” he said.

The Southern Baptist Convention recently debated changing its name to get rid of the memories of its defence of slavery and resistance to civil right. They decided to keep the name, and apparently some of them decided to hold on to racism as well. The good news is that the convention is expected to choose its first black moderator. Let us hope the voices of hate will eventually lose their leadership roles in that body.

I’m in way over my head here, but I really find this kind of science thrilling even when I don’t understand it all. Apparently, Dutch scientists have glipsed evidence for a controversial sub-atomic particle predicted 75 years ago by an eccentric genius named Majorana who later vanished. The partical is called a “fermion.” Unlike particless like positrons and electrons that annihilate one another when they meet, this partical is said to be equal to its anti-particle. Any physicists who trip across my little blog are welcome to explain more.

To read article, click here.

Fifty years ago President Eisenhower signed a law that prohibited the Federal government or its contractors from hiring gay people. A few days ago President Obama’s office notified GLBT advocates that he would not issue an exectutive order banning such discrimiation.

The President had campaigned on a promise to repeal the order, but determined to take, a “multipronged effort to better address workplace discrimination against gay and transgender Americans.” In other words he is asking us to believe that he trusts the Republican congress to protect GLBT workers.

Slate Magazine quotes Charles Kaiser:

“In 2012 it’s outrageous that the current president is reluctant to sign an executive order that would do the opposite (of Eisenhower’s order),” Kaiser added. “After getting Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed, and refusing to defend DOMA in court, Obama has by far the best record on gay rights of any president. His decision to blemish that record this way is baffling and disturbing.”

Slate says further that “Human Rights Campaign (HRC) president Joe Solmonese said in a statement that he was particularly shocked by the White House’s move considering the amount of evidence supporting the necessity of such a measure. “No similar executive order has ever had this kind of extensive research or factual basis established,” he said.”

The New York Times has criticized the President’s decision, calling it a “sin of omission.” “His hesitation to ban gay bias by government contractors, like his continued failure to actually endorse the freedom to marry, feels like a cynical hedge,” the editorial board writes.

Some time back, when asked whether he believed in gay marriage, Obama hedged by saying he is “evolving”. Perhaps after the election the President will have evolved enough to stand fully upright on this issue.

To read the complete Slate article, click here.

It’s always such a strange moment when someone stands up to a bully and he claims to be a victim. Scott Walker has made a career out of bashing women’s rights, and waging what Forbes called a “war” on state employee unions including teachers. Now the Governor is in a recall election and he tells the NRA in this speech that he’s getting picked on. That’s one version of the events. The other is that his intended victims are fighting back.

To read, click here.

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” -United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler.

Sean Arce won the 2012 Myles Horton Education Awared for “Teaching People’s History”. He was also dismissed the same year. The award, given in the spirit of Howard Zinn, honors teachers who give voice to the those left out of traditional history courses. The Arizona legislature has banned the teaching of such studies, which makes sense. After all, you never want to see your victims’ faces or hear their voices. You want the story of the indigenous populations and the enslaved populations to be as muffled and vague as possible.

“Arce maintains he was fired because he spoke out against what he saw as a discriminatory law targeting Mexican Americans and Latinos. “I, along with many others, stood up and [saw] this law as unconstitutional,” Arce says. “And because we stood up, the district has retaliated.”

America doesn’t just have a race problem, America has a white supremacy problem. It’s in our history,it’s in our religion, it’s in our culture. How do we eliminate the problem? First we must face it in ourselves. Regardless of our skin color, we have been propagandized and we need to face that terrible fact about almost every one of us. Then we must stop the propaganda of white supremacy by lifting up all the other voices in our common history. Finally, those of us who are white people, must learn to stop singing lead, and learn to sing harmony with our entire human family.

To view clip, click here.

Ahh, the fog of war. It’s just so hard to know what is really happening. According to this Turkish source, Brazil and Turkey put together a deal known as “The Tehran Declaration” two years ago which had Western sources supplying uranium for Iran’s nuclear program and thereby being able to control and moniter the supply.

Apparently, Iran agreed:

“But the U.S. and other powers rejected it because they feared Iran had agreed to its terms only to undercut a U.N. Security Council resolution that imposed new sanctions on the government in Tehran.”

To read article, click here.

They used to call them “melodramas.” The brave mother trying to fight off the heartless banker and protect her sick child. People once cheered for the heroine and hissed at the banker. In this story, the hero did show up, but he gave the money to the banker.

This is a story of a mother with a special needs daughter. She fell behind on her payments. The bank restructured the loan so she could meet the payments which she did faithfully. What she did not know was that the bank was selling the house at the same time.

To read story, click here.