Op-Ed

The American Bison Captures An Ailing US

American Bison photo by Dan Dzurisin Flickr/creative commons

There are many examples around lately of inverse logic and intellectual disconnect but few capture it as well as what is going on with the mighty American Bison. On the one hand we can herald the US Senate for backing the American Bison as our national mammal. No animal is more worthy, more connected to our early heritage. There were originally 6 species of bison globally, and now there are only two, the American Bison and the Steppe Bison, and many of these have been interbred with cattle. By the 1800s, the number of American Bison had declined to ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

VenusPlusX Is A Conversation

Columbia, seen here in the Statue of Freedom atop the US Capital, is Venusplusx

Dan Massey and I founded VenusPlusX in January 2011. Since then we were often asked, "Which one is X?" to which we answered, jokingly, "it's not polite to ask." We were and are as one in our commitment to make a better world. Our inspiration for the name, VenusPlusX, was a 1960 sci-fi book, Venus Plus X, which is about a gender-neutral future society. Sexual freedom is our theme, specifically A New Age of Sexual Freedom, because it comprises ultimate freedom, the final freedom that will be acknowledged, and the only one that can ensure all preceding freedoms. Full sexual freedom signifies ...

Read More›
in Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Trail of Tears Continues

Photo by Hammerin Man Flickr/creative commons

There is no end to United States' fatal exploitation of America's indigenous peoples. First the wholesale genocide of 95% of native Americans, the holocaust at the founding of the USA. Indian schools that shattered families came next followed by the granting and taking away of promised land, and the concentration camps called reservations where healthcare and educational opportunities are denied. Our government's invasion of sacred lands on behalf of corporate fossil fuel production are part of this disastrous tapestry, all speaking to humanity's inhumanity. Congress speaks of reconciliation but never backs it up, and has so far ignored formal ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Implosion WILL Be Televised

by KAZ Vorpal Flickr/creative commons

The very depravity of what's now pouring from their mouths is doing all the work for us. Back from traveling, I am fully enjoying how US Republicans have answered my prayers, and then some. The self-immolation of their influence occurs hourly now, and I've got the marshmallows. The long-ago right wing has been completely co-opted by the political religious right. These fake christianist profiteers want to destroy our democracy to speed their promised white, male christian sharia. They are motivated by greed, not faith, to protect the fortunes of an entitled elite. They relish the idea of constitutional crises and ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 1 comments

No More Right Wing, Just Religious Right

"It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."

That quote is from 1981, and its prescience comes from an unlikely source: evangelical superstar Billy Graham. No one was or is more embedded in the religious fundamentalist culture, but even he foresaw the coming perversion of religious-based politics. Through this summer, I have been equating the religious right with the GOP because every Republican elected and appointed official has by now been completely co-opted by their science-denying, punishing, and harmful agenda. ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Meditation on Labor Day

Replica of 1886 union pin via Jim Forest Flickr/creative commons

Thank you Laura Clawson (@LauraClawson) for demonstrating in two simple charts that income inequality is reduced in direct proportion to the rise of worker power and self-determination through unionization. The union density that followed WWII through the 50s caused the only dip in income by the top 10%. This is why unions are considered a threat to corporate power and that is why our corporate-controlled government and courts have worked so hard to diminish unions and the right to organize. Like electric cars and railroads so beneficial to the people at large, unions threaten the ruling oligarchy's fat purse. Progressive activists ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

White Supremacists Want To Rebrand #BlackLivesMatter

By AllNiteImages Flickr/creative commons

Special thanks to writers Julia Craven (@CurlyCrayy) and Nick Wing (@nickpwing) for 5 Things To Tell Anyone Who Blames Black Lives Matter For Violence Against Cops. Predictably, Fox News has called out the crazies to gaslight the Black Lives Matter movement and rebrand it as a hate group and murder movement. All of us have to do everything in our power to counter this hateful misdirection designed by, made for, and spread by white supremacists. Please read Craven and Wing's whole piece, if you haven't already, because it so well diffuses the myths used by white supremacists ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / End Police Bias / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Sexual Confusion of the Religious Right

7870244764_1ddc12b72e_z

In connection with our campaign to #VoteOutTheReligiousRight, I wrote The Christian Fundamentalist's Erotic Dream to help pull the sheets off of the perverted sexuality at the root of the religious right's distorted politics, their utter mendacity. In that post, I quoted Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, who sums this up succinctly. "[T]he erotic dream of Amreican fundamentalism is a restoration of a cleansing of impurity, a nation without sin, an empire of the personal as political . . . "Today’s Christian conservatives define themselves as apart from the world, and ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Scared of Their Own Shadow: The Inherent Paranoia of Anti-Government Militias

If any more proof was needed to show the distortion of the Second Amendment, a listen to this broadcast over the weekend discussing the schisms among the Oath Keepers, following their crazy foray in Ferguson, will do the trick. https://youtu.be/aTZ48xSvASs Militias and those militant about their subjective view of the Second Amendment are by nature anti-government. They presume to elevate their personal paranoia to DefCon4, and pay no attention to the facts on the ground that might interfere with their own narcissism. Just this past weekend, about 3,000 Teapartiers and Oath Keepers rallied to secede from New York state, ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized / Videos  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Did Ted Cruz Mess With Your Church?

Senator Ted Cruz Flickr/creative commons

Today, we're searching for data on just how many churches openly violated their tax-exempt status yesterday by reading from their pulpits a sermon written and sent to them by Senator Ted Cruz to rally support for a government shutdown to defund *Planned Parenthood. On the left, we are seriously questioning the right of religious organizations to maintain their taxpayer subsidies for preaching hate and discrimination. On the right, we hear protests against churches preaching about and facilitating sanctuary cities protecting undocumented immigrants. But, no matter where you stand, few actions so clearly define the bankruptcy of church-state ...

Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments