My Journey of Faith

Ronald Reagan famously said when asked why he switched parties, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." That sentiment aptly describes some of my feelings about the Catholic Church, a church in which I was baptized, raised, confirmed and married. It is a church which provided me with the moral background which has guided me throughout my life, gave me a first rate education throughout elementary and high school, and kept taking me back time and again when I would leave it and then eventually be drawn back for various reasons. It is also the church to which I find myself no longer able to call myself a member because I simply can no longer justify the divergences in our philosophies and beliefs.

My religious journey has been one which has been as heart wrenching as it has been joyful, as agonizing as it has been rewarding. I share it with you here not to convince you of any particular belief is "correct" as there is no such thing as far as I can see or to criticize any particular belief. I share it simply to help me make some sense of everything that has happened so far and perhaps to seek understanding both in myself and in others.

I was blessed to be raised in a parish outside of Syracuse, NY that was led by an incredible priest who saw his duty as not only spreading the word of God, but leading his congregation to live God's word by seeking justice in our community and in the world. Fr. Tom McLaughlin was not your ordinary priest. An Irish Catholic priest who preached more like a black Baptist minister, it was not surprising that he said that the closest he ever felt to his faith was when he marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. Fr. Tom was nowhere near traditional and he at times ignored the dictates of the bishops, especially when those dictates tried to bring particular political issues into the pulpit. But where other parishes were closing or having to consolidate, we had to build a bigger church because parishioners were standing outside the doors of our small church at all three Masses on Sunday.

I loved my church. Not just my parish, but the church as a whole. I saw the Catholic Church as one that welcomed all people. One that stood for justice in our society and was a church of love and inclusion.

As I grew older, as with many young adults I grew away from the church. Like many people gaining new knowledge and insight, inevitably there are conflicts and often those conflicts lead to contempt. Church grew less and less important to me. I questioned my faith. I looked at other religions taking bits of truth where I found them.

For years I drifted, short on faith, rarely attending church. When I lived in the DC area, there was a Catholic church literally across the parking lot from my apartment. But I think I attended mass there twice, both when my then girlfriend who was a little less conflicted with her faith was visiting me.

Still, whenever I would move to a new community, the first thing I would do would be to find the nearest Catholic Church. Some of it was a sense of obligation, some of it was a sense of finding a social circle with similar backgrounds - a sort of tether on which to secure myself. But ultimately the doubts would get the best of me and I would fall back into my drift.

The next big step in my journey would involve a relationship which would eventually become my first marriage. She was raised Presbyterian and I would attend with her and her family most weekends. This was the first church in which I saw a woman leading worship as the interim associate minister at the time was a woman. I enjoyed my time at that church and although I couldn't quite buy the whole predestination thing, I did find the community welcoming. We were eventually married in that church (complete with kilt and bagpipes) but at our new home together we went back to our drifting ways.

It wasn't until the shock of 9/11 and the following week long coverage of the subsequent outpouring of bereavement and mourning that I returned to church. I followed the tragedy of Fr. Mychal Judge's death as he was ministering to his beloved firemen. I watched his funeral Mass as well as the funeral Mass of Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson. The latter Mass was held at the very church in Arlington, VA that I had attended on those couple of occasions, across the parking lot from my apartment. We felt we needed to attend a service that Sunday, but I made the request that we go to the Catholic church because I wanted something with which I was familiar.

After that, I started attending Mass regularly. As my marriage deteriorated for reasons having little to do with faith, my devotion to the faith in which I was raised became stronger. I found myself praying regularly seeking guidance (something very rare for me). I purchased a Bible and read the passages listed in the church bulletin daily. After we separated, I started a relationship with a Catholic woman who like myself had a somewhat rocky relationship with her faith. We attended church together regularly. That relationship eventually ran its course, and I met the woman who would become my wife and true partner in life. She, too, was Catholic and our shared faith helped cement our relationship. I had my first marriage annulled by the Catholic church and Celena and I exchanged our vows during a full wedding Mass on May 14, 2005.

So why is it, after all that the faith that raised me, formed me, and has played such a major role in my life have I at the age of 41 found myself leaving the Catholic church for another? Well, for the most part it comes down to finding the Catholic church to have become more dogmatic, more exclusive, and simply less accepting of any kind of debate among its ranks. It is hard to have a conversation when one side stops listening.

There are several examples in just the past weeks that illustrate my disenchantment with Catholicism. In the news in the past weeks were the Vatican's very serious rebuke and investigation into American nuns who were apparently focusing too much on social justice and ministering to the sick and poor and less time on dogmatic political ideas; the Catholic League (which let's face it with one dude with an Internet connection and a Rolodex of media contacts) calling for a boycott of the Daily Show because he made fun of the nonexistent War on Christmas; and a bishop in the Midwest who likened President Obama to both Hitler and Stalin during a sermon. The church which was once so welcoming was becoming increasingly dogmatic and intolerant of diverging views.

Unfortunately, the joy which I once found in my religion had been replaced by an increasing despair. Furthermore, I worried about my daughter and what she would face in the future if this trend continues as I expect it to. I did not want her to be raised in a church in which she would be seen as less than equal as anyone else and I did not want her to be not accepted or even worse to become intolerant of others who may be different from her.

But I don't mean for this to be a diatribe about the Catholic church. I have many friends and family who have found great faith and solace in the Catholic church. I will be forever grateful for the support the church gave me and my family during the ordeal of my mother's recent death. The church has a lot of good in it and for those who continue to find comfort and good in it, I have nothing but respect and well wishes.

You see, this is not a journey of loss, but a triumph of rediscovery of a faith which I thought dead and gone. It is a story of joy overcoming sadness and despair. It is a story of rebirth in which I rediscovered the tremendous love that faith in Christ brings.

There are three instances in which I can pinpoint in which I truly felt myself filled with the Holy Spirit. The first was the weekend of my confirmation (my parish obviously did a pretty good job on that one). The second was during the lowest period of my divorce when I was living in an efficiency apartment with a Murphy bed and awoke one morning to pouring rain, near freezing temperatures and could only think to myself "What a beautiful day". The third was the first Sunday I attended Mass at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Shelby, NC (and for that matter every Sunday since on which I have attended).

What I experienced in my attendance at Redeemer was a reawakening of my faith. My experiences with what I perceived to be an ever shrinking and exclusionary Catholic church left me doubting the beliefs with which I had grown and even doubting my belief in God. I felt that there was something wrong with me since I was constantly told that the beliefs I knew in my heart to be true were wrong.

My wife and I sought out a place in which we could raise our daughter in a religious tradition. We valued the morals that our Catholic upbringing instilled in us, but we had stopped attending Mass at our local church due to severe disagreements we had with the current pastor of that parish. We had tried other parishes in neighboring communities, but none seemed to be a good fit and were a significant distance from us as well.

I first was drawn to Redeemer after reading that they were hosting a discussion against North Carolina's Amendment One which would enshrine in the state's constitution discrimination against gays and lesbians as well as harming any number of other domestic relationships.

Although I had for years advocated for LGBT rights and have had many close friends who are gay, I had been raised in a religious tradition which shunned and condemned gays and lesbians and treated them as a form of evil. I often wondered why so many of my gay friends identified themselves as Christian as the two things seemed mutually exclusive to me based on my religious background and tradition. Of course, as was made clear to me upon attending my new church, the reason they identify as Christian is because God's love encompasses all of us in all of our individual selves as important and valued members of His family and celebrates our humanness fully and openly.

I soon realized that it wasn't the message, but the delivery system that had alienated me. My faith with which I had struggled my entire life was suddenly stronger than ever. I was filled with a sudden sense of joy. The dissonance that I felt for years sitting in the pews of the various Catholic parishes I attended was replaced by a sense of calm and peace, as the realization that I could at once be fully committed to my faith while at the same time holding the beliefs I have on social and political issues fully settled on me.

I am grateful to Mother Valori Sherer, Deacon Pam Bright and all of the wonderful members of my new church community for welcoming me and my family with open arms and making us feel welcome and for building such a loving and welcoming community of faith. Most of all, though I thank my very understanding and ever patient wife for making this journey with me even though it has been even more difficult for her and even though she is not where I am yet in her journey. I thank God for her courage and understanding throughout all of this.

This has been my journey of faith. Although it may end up somewhere different than yours, I hope everyone reading this can find the love, peace, and joy that I have found on my journey. Whether it is a journey of faith or of non-faith, of whatever denomination or religion, the truth is there to be revealed to you as it is meant for you to find it. The search can be painful and fraught with fear and desperation, but the result can be worth much more than all the hardships.

This journey has made me more confident in myself, closer with my wife and my daughter, better able to see Christ in all those with whom I come in contact daily, and more loving in everything I do.

Thanks be to God.

Dear Lord, We Have Seven More Months of This?

I remember several years ago when there was great consolidation of media outlets into the hands of just a few large corporations that there were great concerns voiced by many about the resulting threat to journalistic objectivity. These warnings were largely ignored.

Next, there was the combining of news divisions with entertainment divisions within these large corporations. There were many saying that hard news would be tossed aside for sensationalistic "if it bleeds, it leads" tabloid style journalism. Again, ignored.

Shortly thereafter came the rise of the cable news stations and the 24-hour news cycle which took the earlier developments and put them on steroids and combining the sensationalism and profit motive with political editorials disguising themselves as news.

Put all of these together and you have the 2012 election in a nutshell. It seems that most of the "news" organizations would rather gin up controversy, looking for ratings rather than the truth. They end up treating the campaign more like a reality show than a serious event resulting in the choice of a person who is arguably more powerful than any other human on earth.

In the last weeks, we've seen several examples of this. Two in particular stick out - the Romney etch-a- sketch comment and the Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life comment. Both of these were essentially non-events. Both were throw away comments, one by an advisor to Mitt Romney about the truth that every candidate has to change their positions between the primary and general elections and the other making a point about how out of touch somebody with a couple of Cadillacs, a few mansions, and an elevator for her car is with the average American woman.

But in our über-sensationalist, infotainment news industry, these become what passes for serious news taking up hours of our daily coverage while anything discussing serious issues is thrown aside.

Combine the need for ratings with the unbelievable laziness of the modern television journalist and the presentation gets even worse. During my recent battle with my own digestive system, I spent the intermittent conscious moments of my day watching various news programs. Needless to say, I was less than impressed with the quality of the information put forth as newsworthy or even as fact.

One such report was of the "study" released last week stating that the President's health care law would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the deficit. This was reported as if it was an independent non-partisan government report. The graphic showing the amount of the increase listed the author's name. Since I had nothing better to do than lay in bed and run to the bathroom, I did a quick search of the individual. Within 5 minutes I was able to see that far from being objective this was a report put out by a think-tank funded by the Koch brothers and the study was for lack of a more apt term, a lie. But millions of viewers of ABC News think that Obamacare is going to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the deficit because the news said so and apparently there was no one in the news division willing to take the 5 minutes that I did to figure this out.

Then there is the arrest of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin. It amazed me how the shooting of an unarmed black teen could become such a raging controversy where we were actually having debates across our television dials over whether the unarmed black teen should have been shot to death. Seriously.

I was hoping that once the arrest was made that some of the sensationalism of the story would die down. Boy was I wrong. The morning after the arrest, all of the mainstream media outlets were showing George Zimmermann's receipt from the jail's commissary, including commentary on the size of his underwear (large) and his favorite snack food (Fritos). Apparently there were no adults in charge who were there to inform the networks that this was not news and was in fact trivializing an unimaginable tragedy wherein a young man's life was senselessly cut short.

So, we have seven more months of this kind of tawdry, embarrassing, scandal making coverage to go before we elect a President. Combine this with the billions of dollars of super PAC ads, all of which will make Himalayas out of the mole hills of differences between the major party candidates and I think we may end up with an electorate even more fed up with our political process than we have now. Yes, that may in fact be possible.

So, I think I may just take the rest of the campaign off. I'd simply rather read a book, or play with my daughter, or watch Syracuse sports, or a million other things than watch ginned up controversies between the campaigns of two well heeled conservatives vying to see who can better help Wall Street bankers get richer, trample on our fundamental rights, and bomb the hell out of this week's newest enemy of the state. Why do I care? Hell, why do any of us?

Why Obama's Waiver of NDAA Provisions Means Squat

There were great "Huzzahs!" across the liberal landscape last week as President Obama announced that he had signed a "waiver" of some of the most troubling of the provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012. According to the announcement, the new rules which deal with Section 1022 of the law (previously Section 1032 as set forth in the original Senate bill). The White House announced that this section already is inapplicable to United States citizens and the President was waiving the applicability to legal resident aliens. Furthermore, the President was allowing for those who are required to be held under military custody to be transferred back to civilian custody when necessary..

Immediately following this announcement, both the liberal and mainstream press hailed this as a win for civil liberties (see the Huffington Post article on the announcement here). Posts on Reddit as well as on Facebook and the twitterverse were celebrating Obama's "veto" of the NDAA detention provisions. Once again President Obama was a friend to freedom and was living up to his promises to be the champion of civil liberties and the Constitution on which he campaigned in 2008.

Except that he isn't and his "rules" do no such thing.

I have previously discussed this bill on this blog in my post "We Are All Well and Truly F***ed" which can be found here. As pointed out there, this section of the NDAA only deals with the requirement that anyone covered under this bill be detained by the military and held indefinitely in military custody. It is true that this section does not apply to U.S. citizens and under these rules the President is agreeing that he is not going to apply this to legal permanent resident aliens either. Of course this does not prevent him from doing so if he changes his mind, which he can, of course, do since he is the one making the rules in the first place.

But what is genuinely appalling about the pass that the President is receiving on this is that nothing in these rules addresses the biggest and most troubling aspect of this law in the first place. That is that the President is still given the authority under this law to detain and hold indefinitely without charge or trial anyone, including United States citizens, who is deemed by the President in his sole judgment to be a terrorist or to have committed a belligerent act against the United States. Let me state that again so that you out there who are so scared of a Rick Santorum presidency that you are willing to buy any of the bullshit that the Obama campaign is shoveling at you: NOTHING IN THESE RULES CHANGES THE PRESIDENT'S ABILITY TO DETAIN AND HOLD INDEFINITELY WITHOUT CHARGE OR TRIAL ANYONE, INCLUDING UNITED STATES CITIZENS, WHO IS DEEMED BY THE PRESIDENT IN HIS SOLE JUDGMENT TO BE A TERRORIST OR TO HAVE COMMITTED A BELLIGERENT ACT AGAINST THE UNITED STATES.

This law sets up a despotic presidency and it was supported by almost all of the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Much was made in the media of the opposition to the bill by the FBI and CIA who said that it would harm their ability to pursue terrorist suspects in the United States. But, again, most of this coverage missed the point. The FBI and the CIA are all for indefinite detention without charge. It makes their life easier. They just didn't want the military to have all the fun, they wanted in the game themselves. Thus the changes to the law which cut out the requirement that the detention be by the military.

So, all of this celebrating among liberals over this decision of President Obama to do an about face and suddenly embrace individual liberties was all for nothing. The fact that the implementation of rules which have no effect on the very law which caused all of the rightful rancor among civil libertarians on both sides of the political divide in the first place, is being hailed as proof that a second Obama term would be much different than the first shows a lot about those doing the celebrating. It shows that the left is either willfully blind to what is happening due to their fear of a truly draconian right wing Presidency or it shows that they really didn't understand this law in the first place. Either conclusion is troubling.

If the left is being willfully blind to the abuses of the Obama administration in the realm of civil liberties, it shows a lack of real concern over these issues in the first place. It is one thing to vote for someone knowing that he is not the real deal because his opposition is so horrible, it is truly another to hail your choice as someone who truly believes in what you do. If you are voting for Barack Obama because you really believe that he is a civil libertarian and will fight for individual rights and liberties in his second term, you are stupid and there is nothing I can do for you. If you know this is not the case, but you are going to proclaim that he is such because he passed some meaningless rules regarding the worst piece of legislation he signed then you are a liar and any authority you claimed to have on these issues is forever forfeited.

It is also quite possible that those hailing this decision simply never understood the NDAA or its ramifications for the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans in the first place. This would certainly make sense since if people on either side of the political spectrum understood what this legislation, along with a whole host of other attacks on our civil liberties that have occurred over the last decade, there would have (or should have) been a revolution by now. Of course those on the left are not immune from the extraordinary lack of engagement in political and civil affairs that has seemed to become the norm for American citizens. Since 2001, the United States has seen the implementation of the largest Federal bureaucracy ever devised whose sole purpose is to restrict liberty and engage in unprecedented collection of information (read: spy) on American citizens in the history of our republic in the Department of Homeland Security, the unprecedented transfer of wealth to the richest individuals in the nation, as well as the largest criminal conspiracy ever to be pulled off in the banking meltdown of 2008, all done with the seal of approval of our Federal government. All the while, the only thing that the average American citizen seemed to care about was how cheap his gas was going to be and who was going to survive on this week's Dancing With the Stars. We get the government we deserve, and what we deserve right now is either Barack Obama or one of the four idiots who are battling to lose to him.

Look, I get that Barack Obama might be the lesser of two evils in 2012. But don't try and convince me that the lesser of two evils isn't evil.

STFU, Rush Limbaugh

Everyone has heard the vile and offensive statements targeting Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. There is certainly no need to rehash them here. But what is behind them? Why would this bloated, aging loud mouth attack such a seemingly undeserving victim? Is it just entertainment as Rick Santorum suggests? Is it a desperate attempt to seem relevant? I believe it is something more. Rush Limbaugh is the right's champion and this is the warning shot to any woman that dares question their anti-woman agenda.

When the president announced that his administration was adopting rules requiring that insurance companies provide birth control without charge as preventative care the radical right saw an opportunity to foment outrage among their constituents with the type of wedge issue on which they count to bring out the vote in a presidential election year. They were running out of these types of issues. In the past a commercial showing blacks taking jobs away from whites or a constitutional amendment stopping godless sodomites from getting married was enough to bring out the army of voters to assure a competitive GOP race. But something happened on the way to 2012. You see the country just isn't racist, bigoted, or hateful enough for this type of easy cheap theatrical stunt to work anymore.

So, the GOP took the issue of contraception coverage (something insurance companies support) and turned it from an issue of women's health into a question of religious freedom. You see the administration wasn't allowing large employers who were affiliated with a religious institution to be exempted (although the churches themselves are). Suddenly, all of the presidential candidates and the white male congressional leadership (well, ok, I guess you could consider Boehner to be orange) was practically falling over themselves to portray the president as someone who was going to force you to give up your religious beliefs and send you to reeducation camps if you disagreed.

Of course, once again, they overplayed their hand. Rick Santorum went so far overboard, saying JFK wanted to make him throw up and accusing Obama of promoting a phony theology, that he not only blew a double-digit lead in Michigan, ultimately losing to Mitt Romney, but he even lost the Catholic vote.

In possibly the stupidest move of any, House Oversight Committee chairman Darryl Issa held a hearing on the opposition to the contraception requirement and heard from a panel of all male religious leaders. The Democrats on the panel had requested that Ms. Fluke testify in the hearing. Issa refused stating she was unqualified on the issue (odd since she was the only one there with ovaries).

The resulting scene of conservative old men, many in clerical collars, was a made for social media event. Fresh off their rebuke of the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision not to fund Planned Parenthood, progressives flooded Facebook and Twitter with outrage against the completely out of touch GOP leadership. As Republicans were introducing legislation exempting any employer from covering contraception or anything else the didn't want to cover because of moral objection, the Democratic leadership was winning the day by simply showing the stupidity of the Republican leadership doubling down on an issue they had already lost.

Nancy Pelosi convened a hearing at which Ms. Fluke was finally allowed to give the testimony not allowed by Issa. She told of her friend who suffered from a painful and dangerous condition in which her ovaries became enlarged due to cysts forming on them. The condition would have been easily treated with birth control pills. However since they were at Georgetown, a Catholic institution, birth control was not available at the campus health center or covered under their student health coverage. Her friend's condition went untreated, resulting eventually in her friend losing her ovaries. Pretty compelling story.

Enter Limbaugh. Raging in his usual bloviating, drug-addled style, Limbaugh went on the offensive. Labeling Ms. Fluke a slut and a prostitute, Limbaugh attacked her unmercifully. After receiving the expected criticism from the usual corners, he went further saying that she should film her sexual conquests so that he could make sure he was getting his money's worth for paying for her contraception. He went on in this fashion day after day and he will next week too. You see for Rush Limbaugh, being an asshole means never having to say you're sorry.

Rush has suffered some repercussions because of this. A few advertisers have dropped their sponsorships. There were some timid rebukes coming from Republicans. But the advertisers will be replaced and Rush need not worry about the GOP coming down too hard on him. After all they count on this sniveling wretch to get their true message out to the faithful.

But, you see, this unlike the other previous methods discussed was not a rallying cry to conservative church goers to get out the vote. No, this was something much more sinister. Limbaugh's audience for this hideous attack was not his listeners. It was a warning to any woman who dares speak out for her own rights and her own body to do so at your own risk. The message was clear: stand in our way and risk being labeled a slut, a prostitute, a whore, a pornographer. Your reputation will be left in the dust and you will be subjected to public ridicule in the worst way imaginable.

This is nothing new. How long have women been told to stay in their place? Every woman who has challenged their repressors has been labeled the same way. Many have turned back or been cowed by the unrelenting attacks. But change has been brought about by those who were strong enough to stand up to the assaults and suffer the barbs, enduring for the cause. And as they stood up more and more stood with them.

So we now are all called to stand with Sandra Fluke, our sister who had the audacity to dare to speak the truth to power. We must remain strong for her and for our mothers and sisters who have fought and continue to fight these battles. But most of all we must stay strong for our daughters who will bear the consequences of our decisions today for good or for bad.

So it is the time to stand together and say that we will no longer be intimated by the Rush Limbaugh's of the world.

So STFU Rush Limbaugh.

Why Progressives Should Fear Rick Santorum (It's Not Why You Think)

Two things are becoming increasingly clear this election season: 1) Mitt Romney is looking less and less likely to be the GOP nominee; and 2) whoever is the nominee is going to be pushed so far to the right that he or she will in no way be able to effectively challenge Barack Obama in November. The reason on both counts is the same: the incredible emergence of Rick Santorum.

At first glance Santorum's improbable rise to the lead in the GOP primary race would seem to be a good thing for progressives. His completely insane brand of theological right wing conservatism turns off everyone to the left of Glenn Beck.

So why should progressives fear Santorum? The obvious answer would be the remote possibility that Santorum would actually get elected and our political realm would become a nightmare of monumental proportion. But that is so unlikely that if it did actually happen I really would start preparing for the Mayan Apocalypse.

No, the real problem with Santorum's emergence is the fact that because the GOP has done cartwheels to position themselves to the right of Barack Obama, that the chances of any movement away from the pro-Wall Street, anti-liberty policies of his first term are unlikely at best.

This election gave progressives the opportunity to move the Democrats away from their recent centrist governance by withholding our votes, refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils. There was a real opportunity to either move Obama to the left (which would put him somewhere in the middle) giving some hope to a second Obama term, or make the Democratic party re-evaluate its position (which is no longer the party of the middle class or the workers) if they lost the 2012 election.

With the specter of a possible Santorum candidacy or some other wing nut in his place, the next four years is unfortunately most likely going to resemble the last four. The Republicans are placing themselves so far to the completely insane right wing, that there is really no choice but to vote for a second Obama term. So there will be no consequence for Obama's policies of appeasement of Wall Street, of the overwhelming secrecy of his Administration, of his policies of assassination and indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial, of the largest number of deportations in history, of neo-liberal economic policies which increase the gap between rich and poor and steer us toward austerity and the further suffering of our lower classes, of the unparalleled attacking and punishing of whistle blowers, of the doubling down of the prosecution of marijuana growers and distributors which are legal under their state's laws, all of which have been the policies which this Administration has put into action over the last three plus years.

With no primary challenge, and no socially moderate opposition, Obama will go into the next four years thinking that his landslide re-election, which is all but inevitable at this point, is somehow an approval of these policies and we will see four years of the same policies further cementing the fact that no major party represents the vast majority of Americans who make up the increasingly shrinking middle class and the ever growing lower class.

What Santorum means is that the progressives have lost. Let's face it, Obama was just not that into us to begin with. Now with no reason for the Democrats to court our vote, we are essentially left ignored by both parties once again. Obama's campaign coffers will be filled by the same Wall Street titans who have on the surface met his occasional criticisms with derision while at the same time benefiting handsomely from his actions (or lack thereof), the protests at the DNC will be covered as crazy anarchists who won't be mollified by anything, and those who, like me, continue to criticize Obama's policies will be even further marginalized and met with more credible arguments of "But, do you really want Santorum as President?"

The answer, of course, is no. Or hell no! But I really don't want four more years of the same nonsense that I've received from Obama either. The only thing I can hope for is an Elizabeth Warren victory in Massachusetts catapulting her to the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2016. Now, that would be something to hope for. Of course, we'll probably be left with some inoffensive, stuffed-shirt, Wall Street beholden hack. Martin O'Malley, you used to rock with O'Malley's March, but you'd be one hell of a shitty president.

Has The Republican Party Gone Bat-shit Crazy?

There was recently a study that looked at the early childhood intelligent quotients and political views later in life that found a correlation between low i.q.'s and racism, bigotry and socially conservative views later in life. The Republican party is doing everything they can to show that this study was dead on.

For months now, I have been planning a post entitled "Why I Am Not Voting For Barack Obama, And Why You Shouldn't Either." I was prepared for all of the attacks from my liberal friends who have already been critical of me for my criticisms of the President's continual idiotic decision making, especially when it comes to his handling of the economy and the banking sector. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for a second term for Obama -- his continuing bailout of the banks, his coddling of Wall Street, his failure to pass any kind of immigration reform resulting in the highest number of deportations of any President, his awful deal on the debt ceiling, the overwhelming secrecy of his administration, his prosecution of whistle-blowers, NDAA, on and on and on and on...

So, faced with a President who is and has always been weak in the polls, an economy that is floundering, a continuing unacceptably high number of unemployed and underemployed, what do the Republicans do? They declare war on 52% of the population! The Republicans for some reason have decided that it is a winning strategy to attack women's rights.

We're all used to the Republican platform including the so-called "right to life" plank (it seems Republicans are all in favor of making sure that life is preserved and nurtured as long as it is in utero). Every four years they talk about passing constitutional amendments to ban abortion, and in the interim we have states passing increasingly inane laws that treat pregnant women as if they are too stupid to make decisions for themselves and are therefore forced to have the government intervene on their behalf to saddle them with even more guilt than they would normally have when making such a monumental decision.

But this year, they have gone above and beyond their usual primary season insanity and have crossed straight over into a reality that only seems to exist in the minds of Rick Santorum and those who have spent their adult lives confined to some sort of cult compound (or the Vatican). The four remaining candidates for the Republican nomination are falling all over themselves to find out who can most restrict the lives of American women. Rick Santorum leads the pack with the following arguments: women who have been impregnated as the result of a rape should make the best out of a bad situation and not be allowed to have an abortion (rape is a bad situation?); women should not serve in combat because their emotions may get in the way; abortion causes breast cancer; women should stay at home and are forced by society to enter the workplace (and then blamed his wife for that one). But the others have just been clawing all over themselves to keep up.

This was sent into overdrive when the Obama administration ruled that Catholic hospitals and universities (but not churches or other strictly religious employers) would not be allowed to restrict their employees access to free birth control as part of their employee health insurance. This piggy-backed on the earlier decision of the Obama administration that health insurance policies would have to cover birth control at no cost, something health insurers are more than happy to do since the cost of birth control is less than the cost of abortion and a whole lot less than the cost of pregnancy and birth.

Suddenly the entire party was howling at the top of their lungs. None of the candidates could get to the microphone fast enough to declare this move as an outright attack on the Catholic Church and freedom of religion. Huh? The conservatives were foaming at the mouth over the inherent evil of -- birth control? Now of course, nobody was saying that the Catholic Church had to hand out birth control or that Catholic women had to use birth control (something that 98% of them already do), nobody was telling Catholic doctors that they had to prescribe birth control against their own conscience (although would you go to a doctor who wouldn't prescribe it?), nobody was telling Catholic professors that they had to teach that birth control was morally acceptable or a good thing. They were simply stating that if an employee is covered under their employee health insurance that the Catholic hospital or university could not prevent them from obtaining birth control under their plan.

The outcry over this (or at least the outcry reported by the MSM) forced the administration to take a second look at this and they bent a little. What they did, in a move that was pure political genius, is that they said to the Catholic employers, ok, we are not going to mandate that you pay for the coverage for birth control, what we are going to do is say that the insurer must make it available directly to the employee at no cost. So, religious freedom conundrum avoided, everyone goes home happy, right? Of course not!!!!!

As I said at the time, this move of the Obama administration was going to show once and for all that this issue had absolutely nothing to do with religious freedom, this had to do with women's access to contraception specifically, and women's health and women's rights in general. It amazes me that we are having this argument in 2012. Birth control is simply not controversial for a vast, vast majority of Americans. But there have always been the crazies -- the religious zealots who have never really been comfortable with women having an equal place in society with men, who saw a woman's ability to control if and when she has a child as a threat to their world view. These are the folks that push the failed policies of abstinence only sex education, as if teenagers only thought about having sex because they were told they could in school.

What's even more troubling about these arguments is that, at least in the myopic world of the Republican primaries, they seem to be working. The latest polls show that Rick Santorum is in a dead heat nationally with Mitt Romney. Conservatives are pressuring Newt Gingrich to get out of the race as they seem to be coalescing behind Santorum as the right wing candidate, the new Not-Mitt who will challenge the preppy New England Mormon for the nomination. So, don't expect these arguments to go away anytime soon. In fact as the race grinds on, expect to hear even more crazy statements such as the one from some nitwit woman on Fox News today who said that women in the Army should expect to get raped (I can't make this shit up). We have already seen that the Republicans are already conflating birth control with abortion and they will continue to get further and further off the range as we go along.

What amazes me about this is how it is how much these arguments are sure fire losers. The only thing that the Republicans are doing is scaring the living hell out of everyone who doesn't wear prairie dresses and refuse to cut their hair. Continuing along this road does nothing but assure Barack Obama of re-election and they apparently can't see that this is the case.

So where does this leave us? In a nation whose economy is a house of cards with its central bank sitting on an almost unfathomable amount of toxic debts previously owned by criminal enterprise banking establishments, whose middle class is eroding away to the point of almost non-existence, whose unemployment is still unacceptably high and those who are finding work are finding it at a much less desirable wage and working conditions, whose labor force is having their rights annihilated and their pensions stolen, whose safety net is being eaten away and the futures of our youth being gambled in international casinos of finance, we will again be told that the most important issues facing us are gays, guns and remarkably uppity women.

So, I haven't written that column about why I'm not voting for Barack Obama. And I have gone from looking for anyone to vote for instead of Barack Obama, to seriously considering the possibility that I may have no choice other than to vote for him. This is the first Presidential election in which I will vote as a father. Do I really want to do anything to endanger my daughter's right to live equally in a society with men, to make her own decisions and chase her own opportunities free from the shackles of the past that have kept women subservient to men? Right now, that's what the Republicans are making this election about. And I can tell them the answer to that question is a resounding NO.

So, Why Should I Care About Interest Rates?

I could have subtitled this post "Or...Where the hell is my damn pitchfork?!?!?!?!"

You might wonder why I am complaining that interest rates are at zero percent at least through 2014 if we are to believe the FOMC (and there is no reason not to). Let's face it, there are lots of benefits to low interest rates for consumers -- cheap credit, lower car payments, lower mortgage payments, etc. So why in the world would I be arguing for interest rates to increase?

The simple answer is that it encourages economic responsibility in that higher interest rates encourage saving and right now savers are getting royally screwed in favor of speculators.

But if we look at what led to the economic collapse of 2008 and beyond, we see what real destructive effects debt and low interest rates have had on our economy as a whole and if you really start to understand what is going on, you too will be looking for your own pitchfork (or an arsenal of high powered assault rifles).

I will focus on one scenario here. One of the biggest investors in bond markets are pensions. I'm sure that you've heard all sorts of stories about the trouble that large pensions, especially public employees pensions and unionized manufacturers like automobile companies have had since the collapse in 2008. Often, especially over the last two years this has been used as an excuse for right wing politicians to attack unions and in some cases such as Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and elsewhere to actually attempt to eliminate the right of public employees to bargain collectively. It is the wasteful, overpaid union employees that lead to the unaffordable pensions.

This is nonsense of course, and hopefully you'll see why once you've finished.

Pensions focus on bonds because they are historically the safest investments around. Bonds generally have a guaranteed rate of return at a specific date. Bonds do not have a high rate of return, but they also do not pose much of a risk. However, the rate of return on a bond is effected by the interest rate which is set by the Federal Reserve. When interest rates are high, bonds are a better investment as they have a higher rate of return. However, when interest rates are low, the rate of return on those investments is lower making them a worse investment.

During the 2000s, the FOMC set interest rates at historically low levels. Many times this was in response to huge economic emergencies such as the 9/11 attacks. But as a general rule the decade saw the lowest interest rates overall in recent history, holding for long periods below 2% and spending most of the decade well below 5%.

Because of this, pensions found themselves getting less and less of a return on their usual investments in bonds. This is the major reason that large bond investors such as government and large corporate pension funds started looking elsewhere for places to invest their money. The Trustees of these funds had a duty to maintain a certain level of return for their beneficiaries and the bond market was simply not providing them an avenue in which to find these returns.

Wall Street banks offered a solution to this in the form of derivatives. Derivatives of course are the complex financial instruments such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps which played the largest role in the economic collapse and were responsible for the annihilation of trillions of dollars of wealth in 2008 after the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the rest of the large Wall Street financial institutions.

What derivatives such as CDOs were in their simplest form were securities that were made up of other debts or financial instruments. Say bank A makes 1,000 loans to consumers and then sells those loans to Investment Bank B who then carves up the 1,000 loans into a security. The best loans are Pool 1, the middle loans somewhat riskier are Pool 2 and the worst of the loans which are the most likely to default are Pool 3. These are then sold to investors with a price and return that is equal to the risk that each pool's individual risks.

As long as everyone played by the rules, these were pretty basic, pretty vanilla investments. Sure, they were sexier than your run of the mill bonds like T-Bills, since they would provide a slightly better rate of return since they involved slightly more risk, but they weren't any kind of economic succubus which would devour the entire economy either. The problem was, that as long as interest rates remained relatively normal (5%-7% or higher), there really wasn't a huge market for these types of investments among large pension funds, since the risk simply wasn't worth the slightly higher return.

When interest rates tanked and large investors like pension funds started looking for new ways to satisfy their duties to their beneficiaries is when everyone stopped playing by the rules.

Faced with this huge market of new potential investors, the banks started aggressively marketing these investments which up until that point had been seen as exotic creatures that were far beyond the pale of anything that a wise principled conservative investor like a pension fund would invest in. However, seeing the opportunity to make boatloads of money, these investments were marketed as virtually risk-free investments much like Treasury bonds but with a much higher rate of return.

Once the pension funds (along with other traditionally conservative investors such as life insurance companies, nonprofits, hospitals and the like) were hooked, this is when things went horribly awry. With a sudden increase in demand for CDOs which were mostly based on residential mortgages, there was a need for more product. As a result, there was greater and greater pressure placed on lenders to make more and more mortgages. Inevitably, standards for mortgages dropped. Traditional requirements for a mortgage like having 20% equity as a down payment, a certain level of income, or stability in employment were quickly abandoned, as the goal for many lenders simply became to lend so that the mortgages could be sold to investment banks who would securitize the mortgages into CDOs.

This erosion of traditional standards of lending led to riskier and riskier mortgages making up the CDOs that were being sold as risk-free investments. However, the ratings agencies, who were being paid by the very investment banks whose instruments they were supposed to be scrutinizing, went along for the ride, abandoning their own underwriting standards and continuing to give these increasingly risky investments the highly sought after AAA rating.

As time went on, many of the firms began slicing up these pools of investments even further to create as if out of thin air new AAA investments. In many cases what they would do is take the worst investments of one CDO (Pool 3 for instance) and then slice that up further to create a new CDO with three new levels with the new Pool 1 receiving a AAA rating, even though it was previously considered the lowest level of the prior CDO in which it was included.

The worst offenders (Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are among this group and have paid civil fines in the billions of dollars to settle charges of this without acknowledging wrongdoing) would intentionally create CDOs that were made out of complete junk (the notorious "shitty deals" referred to in Senate hearings on the subject), sell them as AAA risk-free investments to institutional investors and then bet against them, making billions upon billions of dollars as the investments acting exactly as they were designed to, with all of the loans that made up the CDOs defaulting and the value of the investment going to zero.

We know what eventually happened. Plain simple logic would dictate that this type of scheme could not last forever, and the cracks in the foundations started being seen in 2007 and then imploding completely in 2008. The large banks which were responsible for most of what led to the implosion were bailed out and essentially absolved of their wrongdoing with a waive of the hand of Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke.

Although there has been some reform in lending institutions (for instance, the ridiculous interest-only loans and adjustable rate mortgages have been for the most part abandoned and many equity requirements have been reintroduced) the underlying problem that led in great part to the collapse has not only not been remedied, but has become worse. Interest rates have been at 0% for more than three years and the FOMC has said that they will remain there at least through 2014. This policy encourages increases in both institutional and consumer debt as well as discouraging savings. Large investors are still faced with taking on greater and greater risk in order to satisfy their requirements on return. Conservative investors are being squeezed out of the market altogether as there is simply no incentive to save or invest in low risk, low return instruments.

This is how bubbles are created. This is how economies are ruined. This is how nations are destroyed.

What I have presented here is a very bare-bones example of the effect of the FOMC's policies over the last couple of decades. The realities are obviously more complex and more difficult to understand. However, what I have set forth is no less true. The more we pay attention to these machinations, the more we learn how the cards are being stacked against ordinary Americans by our own government and financial institutions. The more we pay attention, the less likely we are to stand by and say nothing or believe the talking heads on CNBC who say "it's all a part of the market and there's nothing we can do about it." The more we pay attention, the more likely we are to demand change.

Are you looking for your pitchfork yet?