RealLiberalChristianChurch.org

Take the right stand on this. California SB 1172 is horrendously misguided. It would leave teenagers and younger children, the subjects of homosexual sexual abuse from whatever source, completely banned from receiving help from licensed mental healthcare providers in California in dealing with confusing homosexual ideas thrust into those children's minds and lives. Of course, that's what most of the homosexual activists really want. They want more and more and more homosexuals to be created in the world, even though they also have been claiming that homosexuals are born, not made.

Every true liberal will stand with me against this bill. Those who stand against me on this are not real liberals but rather fascistic.

Read the excellent linked article by Julie Hamilton:

Misinformation Rampant in the Mental Health Field:

“Born Gay, No Change Possible” Myths Never Substantiated by Researchers, Yet Professionals Seem Unaware

Julie Hamilton, Ph.D.

via NARTH » Misinformation Rampant in the Mental Health Field.

Then read this {via NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality)}: The Pacific Justice Institute says the following about California SB 1172:

This bill strictly bans counselors from telling young people that it is possible to overcome same-sex attractions and feelings--even if the minor or ... parents seek out this type of counseling.

It mandates a new government form that adults must be given before a counselor or therapist can talk to them about "changing" their sexual orientation. The form would strongly discourage anyone from attempting such a change.

It imposes an absurd government orthodoxy that insists it is possible to change one's gender, be bisexual, or go from straight to gay, but it is dangerous and not really possible for an LGBT person to become straight. [emphasis added]

It blames efforts to change sexual orientation for gay suicides, substance abuse, and even relationship problems.

It suggests government intervention in families that do not fully embrace their teens' sexual choices.

It creates unprecedented legal liability for psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, social workers and others who suggest that it is possible to change one's sexual orientation.

In short, the bill violates freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and family autonomy.

The Pacific Justice Institute (www.pji.org)

Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer do a good job of exposing Eric Holder as the consummate Wall Street insider padding his future nest (Obama and he):

Attorney General Eric Holder’s lucrative ties to a top-tier law firm whose marquee clients include some of finance’s worst offenders

[...]

Justices inaction regarding the big Wall Street firms is not for a lack of suspicious activity. Three different government entities exhaustively examined the practices that contributed to the financial collapse, and each has referred its findings to the department for possible criminal investigation. One such matter involved a 2007 transaction by Goldman Sachs, in which Goldman created an investment, based on mortgage-backed securities, that seemed designed to fail. Goldman allowed a client who was betting against the mortgage market to help shape the investment instrument, which was called Abacus 2007-AC1; then both Goldman and the client bet against the investment without informing other clients whose investments were wagers on its success how the securities included in the portfolio were selected. These uninformed clients lost more than $1 billion on the investment. In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with securities fraud "for making materially misleading statements and omissions" in marketing the investment. The SEC, which conducts only civil litigation, referred the case to Justice for criminal investigation.

[...]

...Holder, speaking in February at Columbia University, said that while "we found that much of the conduct that led to the financial crisis was unethical and irresponsible ... we have also discovered that some of this behavior--while morally reprehensible--may not necessarily have been criminal."

via Why Cant Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice? - The Daily Beast.

"...some of this behavior...."? If only "some," then there was "some" that he found was criminal. Regardless, he's full of it. It was illegal on its face — pure fraud. Goldman Sachs defrauded its clients! There is no doubt about it.

God, who is the lesser of evils, Obama or Romney? I want neither at all!

...there will be an end to the use of long-term isolation of prisoners for “security” reasons, and the 19 prisoners will be moved out of isolation within 72 hours; family visits for first degree relatives to prisoners from the Gaza Strip and for families from the West Bank who have been denied visits based on vague “security reasons” will be reinstated within one month; the Israeli intelligence agency guarantees that there will be a committee formed to facilitate meetings between the IPS and prisoners in order to improve their daily conditions; there will be no new administrative detention orders or renewals of administrative detention orders for the 308 Palestinians currently in administrative detention, unless the secret files, upon which administrative detention is based, contain “very serious” information.

For the five administrative detainees on protracted hunger strikes, including Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, who engaged in hunger strike for a miraculous 77 days, their administrative detention orders will not be renewed and they will be released upon the expiration of their current orders.

via Addameer: Palestinian Prisoners’ Mass Hunger Strike Concludes After Agreement is Reached | Palestinian Refugees Right to Return - Al-Awda | causes.com.

I am not a Marxist, but that doesn't mean that I'm a capitalist. I'm not, and Marxism too is coercive. I'm a Christian, and never the twain shall meet!

Nevertheless, Marx's criticisms of capitalism were often very well-founded. It was his prescription that was most in error, and that was due to his strange, sudden, and at the time, unexplained hatred of God. He went away to school supposedly a very devout Christian (writing devotional love poetry about God, etc.), but reportedly within a year, came to detest and pathologically condemn God and of course, therefore, Jesus. This was evident in a letter he wrote to his father.

I wonder what happened to him that year that he turned so.

I've read some of his writings on religion and Christianity in particular and was struck by his ignorance on the subjects. I don't recall the particulars but do remember being struck by the number of factual errors. He seemed to have learned about religion from even Theosophic-type sources, which is sure to misguide when it comes to actual Church history and such.

By Marcello Musto

November 16, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- In recent years Karl Marx has again been featuring in the world’s press because of his prescient insights into the cyclical and structural character of capitalist crises. Now there is another reason why he should be re-read in the light of Greece and Italy: the reappearance of the "technical government".

As a contributor to the New-York Tribune, one of the widest circulation dailies of his time, Marx observed the political and institutional developments that led to one of the first technical governments in history: the British cabinet of the Earl of Aberdeen, December 1852 to January 1855.

Marx’s reports stood out for their perceptiveness and sarcasm. The London Times, for its part, celebrated the events as a sign that Britain was "at the commencement of the political millennium in which party spirit is to fly from the earth, and genius, experience, industry and patriotism are to be the sole qualifications for office", and it called on "men of every class of opinion" to rally behind the new government because "its principles command universal assent and support". All this excited Marx’s derision,which poured forth in his article "A Superannuated Administration. Prospects of the Coalition Ministry, &c" (January 1853).

What the Times found so modern and enthralling was for him sheer farce. When the London press announced "a ministry composed entirely of new, young and promising characters", he mused that "the world will certainly be not a little puzzled [to learn] that the new era in the history of Great Britain is to be inaugurated by all but used-up decrepit octogenarians ..., the bureaucrat, who served under almost every Administration since the close of the last century; other members of the Cabinet twice dead of age and exhaustion and only resuscitated into an artificial existence."

Alongside the judgements of individuals are others, naturally of greater interest, concerning their policies. "We are promised the total disappearance of party warfare, nay even of parties themselves", Marx noted. "What is the meaning of The Times?" The question is unfortunately all too topical today, in a world where the rule of capital over labour has become as feral as it was in the middle of the 19th century.

The separation between economics and politics that differentiates capitalism from previous modes of production has reached its highest point. Economics not only dominates politics, setting its agenda and shaping its decisions, but lies outside its jurisdiction and democratic control – to the point where a change of government no longer changes the direction of economic and social policy.

In the last 30 years, the powers of decision making have passed inexorably from the political to the economic sphere. Particular policy options have been transformed into economic imperatives which, brooking no contradiction, disguise a highly political and utterly reactionary project behind an ideological mask of apolitical expertise. This shunting of parts of the political sphere into the economy, as a separate domain impervious to change, involves the gravest threat to democracy in our times; national parliaments, already drained of representative value by skewed electoral systems and authoritarian revisions of the relationship between executive and legislature, find their powers taken away and transferred to the market.

Standard & Poor’s ratings and the Wall Street index – those mega-fetishes of contemporary society – carry incomparably more weight than the will of the people. At best political government can "intervene" in the economy (the ruling classes often need to mitigate the destructive anarchy of capitalism and its violent crises), but they cannot call into question its rules and fundamental choices.

Greece and Italy

The events of recent days in Greece and Italy are a striking illustration of these tendencies. Behind the facade of the term "technical government" – or "government of all the talents', as it was known in Marx’s day – we can make out a suspension of politics (no referendum, no elections) that supposedly hands over the whole field to economics.

In an article of April 1853, "Achievements of the Ministry", Marx wrote: "The best thing perhaps that can be said in favour of the Coalition ['technical'] Ministry is that it represents impotency in [political] power at a moment of transition." Governments no longer discuss which economic orientation to take; economic orientations bring about the birth of governments.

In Italy, the key programmatic points were listed last summer in a letter (meant to remain secret!) from the European Central Bank to the Berlusconi government. To restore market 'confidence", it was necessary to proceed rapidly down the road of "structural reforms", an expression now used as a synonym for social devastation: in other words, wage cuts, attacks on workers’ rights over hiring and firing, increases in the pension age and large-scale privatisation. The new "technical governments", headed by men with a background in some of the economic institutions most responsible for the crisis (Papademos in Greece, Monti in Italy), will set off down this road – no doubt "for the good of the country" and "the wellbeing of future generations". And they will come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who raises a discordant voice.

If the left is not to disappear, it must discover again how to identify the true causes of the crisis that is now upon us. It must also have the courage to propose, and experiment with, the radical policies necessary to achieve a solution.

[Marcello Musto is professor of political theory at York University, Toronto, Canada. Visit http://www.marcellomusto.com. This article first appeared in Italian in Il Manifesto and has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.]

via Political crisis in Italy and Greece: Karl Marx on ‘technical governments’