Browsing PBH By Articles

Get Your Religion Away From My Vagina

Posted on February 21, 2012 in Articles

My vagina grew up with the crazy notion that America, in addition to being the land of the free, is prized for its separation of church and state. So when exactly did religion start governing our politics and influencing American policy? And why on Earth do Catholics and Mormons and Evangelicals get a say in something that likely won’t affect Catholics, Mormons or Evangelicals at all? It seems to me that someone who doesn’t believe in birth control or abortion probably won’t seek either of them. It stands to reason that birth control and abortion access should have pretty much no effect on any “God-Fearing” populations. Access to birth control and abortion does, however, affect my vagina.

My vagina is still undecided as to whether or not it would like to stretch itself over 10 centimeters to push out a 9 pound infant and feed it and clothe it for the next 18 years to life. While it’s not completely outside the realm of possibilities, my vagina would still like a say in the matter. And rest assured, if that day ever comes my vagina will not be consulting the Catholic Church on its position.

My vagina doesn’t care what the Church of Latter Day Saints has to say, either. My vagina is more concerned about having a loving partnership, the support of family, a stable home with a steady income, healthcare, maintaining a healthy lifestyle and being able to protect the sovereign mind of its progeny from the ever-reaching grasp of ideologues, bigamists and fanatics: the Catholic, Mormon and Evangelical churches, respectively.

Slow Down In Syria!

Posted on February 20, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Why Obama Should Go Slow In Syria by Leslie H. Gelb in the Daily Beast.

The Text: Faced with evil, Americans always want to be on the side of the angels. So American interventionists, hawks, and human-rights types are banding together, as they did in Libya, to stop President Bashar al-Assad from killing his people. But when interventionists become avenging angels, they blind themselves and the nation, and run dangerously amok. They plunge in with no plans, with half-baked plans, with demands to supply arms to rebels they know nothing about, with ideas for no-fly zones and bombing. Their good intentions could pave the road to hell for Syrians—preserving lives today, but sacrificing many more later.

Characteristically, the interventionists aren’t holding themselves to higher account; they’re blaming President Obama. To them, it’s all about his failure to act. But the president is moving sensibly and with due dispatch to restrain Assad’s killings. He’s squeezing the dictator economically and isolating him diplomatically. And while it doesn’t look like much, it is suppressing Assad’s freedom to slaughter. He has the military power to kill far more of his people. Meantime, President Obama is trying to fashion a coalition for more direct action—and it isn’t easy.

The natural choice to blunt Assad’s savagery, the Arab League, is practically useless. The league’s “observer missions” have failed. (What a surprise!) Now, the league seeks a joint observer mission with the United Nations. Mind you, if the league really wanted to act decisively, it could, as it did against Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, under NATO cover.

Entering The Mind Of Peyton Manning

Posted on February 20, 2012 in Articles

Imagine you woke up this morning as Peyton Manning: your neck is killing you and you can’t feel your triceps. Four surgeries in nineteen months. Nothing has changed.

You split open the curtains. The news vans are already parked out front. It was fun while it lasted. The anonymity of it all. The quiet morning reps with Todd Helton. The incognito rehab. Then that Dukie kid tweeted about stretching next to you and ruined everything.

You can’t watch SportsCenter anymore. Your last name its own category on the ticker. You are the soup du jour for starving sports writers in the most desolate of sports months.

This is what your muse Favre must have felt like. Except his boss didn’t send drunken tweets about him at 4 in the morning. Some nights you’re family and on others you’re a calculating politician. But every night you’re the subject of a bi-polar billionaire’s warped ramblings for all of the world to see.

Jim Irsay Manning Mind

Your company is in shambles. Your mentors have been fired wholesale. Senior management already anointed your successor: a scruffy, cerebral twenty-two year old kid from Stanford who’s the most breathlessly ballyhooed college quarterback since, well, you.

On the bright side, your baby bro slayed your arch-rival in the House That You Built. You’re proud of him, of course, but inside it grates at you. That the Saints pick-six denied you your own second ring. And that The Onion published those snarky headlines.

Then there’s the arm again… it’s worse than people think. You can’t get the giddy-up on the deep ball like before. You can’t throw left. You can’t throw across your body.

“Trickle Down” Is a Plutocratic Religion, Not an Economic Theory

Posted on February 18, 2012 in Articles

The Article: “Trickle Down” Is a Plutocratic Religion, Not an Economic Theory by Mark Karlin on Buzzflash.

The Text: “Trickle down” is not an economic theory; it’s a self-enriching religion for the wealthiest amongst us.

The economists and pundits are legion who have challenged the notion that the amassing of wealth by a privileged few results in more jobs being created in the US. After all, if this were the case – at a time the richer are becoming even richer – why did we nearly just reach a depression?

This is a very complicated issue to adequately explore, but a book that touches upon a flashpoint area of this debate is “Illegal People” by Truthout contributor and labor specialist, David Bacon. It is the Truthout Progressive Pick of the Week and available with a minimum contribution, shipped directly by Truthout.

One of Bacon’s central arguments is that globalized corporate trade is conducted to increase the profits of large corporate entities. The result is the exact opposite, in many cases, of trickle down. Due to trade agreements that allow corporations to place factories in the lowest cost country, creating near slave-labor conditions – as BuzzFlash at Truthout has shown – for workers who, for example, make almost all American high-tech products overseas.