Mike Huckabee wanted to quarantine AIDS patients

NEA in NH endorses Huck

I just got an email from the National Education Association (Teachers' Union) in NH, recommending that those voting in the Republican primary vote for Huckabee. For the Democratic Primary they endorsed Hilary Clinton. I really wonder how these decisions are made and who makes them!

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by: CathyG @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 18:15:17 PM CST

Opportunist clubs

   while the rest of us are out scrambling to make money and pay bills and pick up the kids, etc. etc.

I'd rather be a lion for one day, than a sheep for my entire life.

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by: PhyllisMs @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 18:19:21 PM CST

[ Parent ]

right

Teachers are a bunch of fat cats, living the good life. We are all rich, have no bills, and no errands.

Union members elect their representatives, who, except in a few cases where there are some full-time paid employees too, also do the full-time work of a teacher. When I was a member of a teachers' union, I was never asked to vote on which candidate to support, but I did vote for a representative who voted. Regardless of the candidate's other positions, the union is going to pick the candidate most likely to support what will allow teachers to actually teach students. Do you have any idea what the rate of attrition in young teachers is right now? You will see very few 30+ year career teachers, and those that have hung in there nearly that long are right now counting their days until retirement, not working <i>in education</i> into their sixties. They are going off to other careers as soon as they can get out and keep their health insurance and the money they put in the pension system over the years, because right now public school teachers don't get to do much but teach kids how to take the tests required by NCLB. We are raising a generation of kids who can read words and can add numbers, but who have no school-taught background in history or science or music or art. There was a very good reason I left teaching. I saw what was coming down the road and I took the first exit ramp, to a place where I could work with kids and feel like I was making a difference.

My sister is a 4th grade teacher. She feels tremendous sadness and guilt that her students are not learning much history or science, but as she is forced to spend most of her time teaching reading to kids who might be able to read the words but can't comprehened a paragraph, and grade-level math to kids who are several grades behind due to whatever reason (learning disability, not enough background on the subject, homeless and no place to do homework), there's no time for much else. If she makes it four year in public school as I did, I'll be surprised. She's in her second. My prediction is that she makes it through three and throws in the towel and finds a job where she feels like she can do some good for kids.

The union is an easy faceless target. What the union did for me in my four years of teaching was bargained for better pay in exchange for longer working hours (though I still couldn't afford to live in the community where I worked), and supported me when an administrator was looking for a way to cause me trouble because of homophobia. Had I really needed to battle her, they would have given me legal support, as on my teacher's salary I was in no position to hire an attorney. Union members are the same ones who are teaching those kids you are picking up.  Will I vote for the candidate the union supports? Probably not this primary unless she's the only one left standing, as my state votes late. But is the union the problem? No, it's the No Child Left Behind law, perhaps a good idea in theory, but a terrible thing for children in practice.

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by: one jewish dyke @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 22:24:17 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Gosh, thank you...

   It is so lovely to hear from real people in real lives that will give us a glimpse of another view point. Thank you very much.

I'd rather be a lion for one day, than a sheep for my entire life.

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by: PhyllisMs @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 00:19:40 AM CST

[ Parent ]

thanks

Thanks for reacting so well to my tirade yesterday. As you can see, it's a trigger issue for me.

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by: one jewish dyke @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 17:28:45 PM CST

[ Parent ]

it's good for us to hear a different point of view...

   I have those moments too, so, hope to hear from you again. Thanks for writing....(smile)

I'd rather be a lion for one day, than a sheep for my entire life.

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by: PhyllisMs @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 18:16:35 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Religious Internment Camps...

   After the government quarantines the AIDS patients in camps then they'll gather up all the gays and send them to Forcible Christianization Programs run by Charles Colson at the InnerChange Freedom Initiative at Newton Correctional Facility, to make us all straight again.

   These people must say these kinds of things because their imaginations are running rampant when thinking about "just what I could do if I was President".  Sort of like kids, dreaming about being "superman" ! Sadly, it's real, real life today, in America. Unbelievable.  

This Huckabee guy is finished in my book and any of the others professing religion. Fine if they have a belief, but I don't want that in a president.

Romney is finished in my book to and as I believe also by the christian majority. The Latter Day Saints have always been viewed as way out in left field, because of these books by Joseph Smith. The just don't meld for the establishes church.

I want someone who will continue to make this country better for all it's citizens and help make the world a better place for children. That should be priority. 

I'd rather be a lion for one day, than a sheep for my entire life.

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by: PhyllisMs @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 18:17:09 PM CST

Ugh

"I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

------------------------------------

This man is clearly not fit to be president. He has obvious theocratic tendencies. "SINFUL"??? What the hell is a sin? Something he belivies in that has no actual substantiation in reality. It is a fantasy. There is no such thing as "sin". It's a made up concept, peculiar to his religion. As such, he is applying HIS religious beliefs to whole groups of people with no substantiation whatsoever. That kind of person is dangerous.

And yet, I still see posts all over this site and others, whining about the Democrats, and how they aren't doing enough to help our cause. I tell you this much: there is no Democratic candidate for president that would be as bad as this guy. And this guy just might be the Republican candidate.

If we don't band together and defeat the Republican nominee in 2008, we all have this brand of neofascist theocratic governing to look forward to. Is that what we want? Not me. 

 

"The right most treasured by civilized men is the right to be let alone."--Justice Louis Brandeis

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by: Sadness @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 18:35:45 PM CST

Sin...

   this has no place in politics, nor in the presidency. This country is made up of people from every religion, except maybe one of New Guinea or South America somewhere, and the President should be above such holy roller talk in politics. This is offensie talk when dealing in politics, so, he's alienated himself from many of various peoples of various religions. Lets hope he's done.

The Presidency is not about sin, these people are idiots. That's a personal belief and should be left of our government...

My sin is my business...between me and my beliefs, and I want government out of my bedroom window ! This is fascism.

Fascism:  a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

That's what these religious politicalists want...social regimentation with the like of Charles Colson...

I believe in separation of church and state.

I'd rather be a lion for one day, than a sheep for my entire life.

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by: PhyllisMs @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 19:26:43 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Southern Baptists Just as Sinful

At least that's what Sister Cornelia Roy taught me in high school - that "religions" such as Southern Baptist and Mormonism, which were both created out of whole cloth in the 19th century, are "psuedo-Christian cults" and akin to Satanism.

If you want to stop sin, I say we start by isolating and locking up the heretics. After all, isn't it more dangerous to society to lead people into false religions that will send them to Hell?

Although, something tells me that Mr. Huckabee wouldn't agree to using my religion teacher's definition of "sin" to form public policy; even if it is okay to use his.

:roll eyes:

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by: CPT_Doom @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 22:08:34 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Inexcusable

This is vile, inexcusable, near Nazi-level homophobia.  I remember the talk by some about quarantining and tattooing people with HIV/AIDS.  The people taking this approach did so not out of knowledge about the illness and about public health strategy, but as an opportunity to act-out an impulse to persecute.

As the AP story points out, it was well known by 1992 that HIV/AIDS was not spread by casual contact.

His statements are horrifying now, and were horrifying then.

 

 

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by: KC @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 19:04:13 PM CST

AIDS doesn't worry me. We know how it's transmitted.

Cancer, however, remains a mystery.  Therefore, I suggest we isolate everyone with cancer.

For the children.

Snark off.

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by: Holly Capote @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 19:31:52 PM CST

Who woulda thunk it?

Fidel Castro and Mike Huckabee had the exact same solution to the AIDS crisis - forced isolation/internment.

Also, note how the Huckster says that 1992 was "almost 20 years" ago.  Try exactly 15 years ago.   But when you're running as fast as you can from the truth as he is, I guess that's the least of his concerns.

I'd like to say, though, that I remember people talking precisely like that back then AND later about AIDS.  Some of them were so-called progressives.  So let's not kid ourselves about the reaction of the general public to this information.  I can imagine many people nodding in agreement with his ass-covering statement, "Yes, yes, we didn't know then what we know now."

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by: Pollyanna @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 19:37:03 PM CST

For it

to be 2007 and be personally attacked by a presidential candidate for who you love is sickening and infuriating! I truly feel that Huckabee is too far to the right to make it all the way but if he ever did ( bags would be packed and plans to move to Canada) underway) he would make Bush look gay friendly. And that spectre is the scariest thought of all.....

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by: Sage @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 21:59:24 PM CST

reading material

He may not have realized that <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> was not a how-to book. I read it more than 15 years ago and it seemed as far away from my world as <i>The Sound of Music</i>. Now it doesn't seem so foreign. I already know what my place in that society would be. Over 30, childless, lesbian, all kinds of feminist stuff collecting on me in a file somewhere? I'd be in the camps, sweeping toxic waste with Offred's mother.

Every time my father calls me an alarmist for talking about going to Canada, I ask him if my great-grandparents were alarmists when they realized they'd better get the hell out of Poland in the 1930s. My great-grandmother and grandmother, then age 13, left in December 1936. My great-grandfather and several of his children by another marriage were already in the US. My great-grandmother had two adult children from her first marriage who were supposed to follow as soon as possible, but the letters from them stopped coming. It doesn't take a scholar on the Holocaust to guess why. 

My grandmother never went back to see her birthplace, because there was nothing to see. I guess since we don't live isolated in shtetls, we won't have whole towns of queers destroyed. But I do wonder if I don't get out soon, will I ever? I stay because of my family and my job, and some hope that we haven't gone too far to never turn back. But I do wonder if this optimism is dangerous.

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by: one jewish dyke @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 22:41:34 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I'm with you...

   I'm sitting one the edge of seat daily. I'm afraid of my government.

Watch the tape on Deacon Frederick Williams. We're already in a police state. These people just murdered that man.

I wouldn't doubt if they began rounding us all up and killing us. Who would do anything about it?

I'd rather be a lion for one day, than a sheep for my entire life.

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by: PhyllisMs @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 00:31:01 AM CST

[ Parent ]

SCRUM Technique: How cops get victims to resist to justify brutality

After viewing countless videos of police brutality, I think I've finally figured out how the police cause people to resist.  It seems to be an unofficial technique that some cops use to cause resistance which they can then use to to justify there brutality.  I'm going to call this technique S.C.R.U.M. standing for

S=Smother the perpetrator (4-5 cops on top of the perpetrator so videos do not show what is going on nor can onlookers see)

C=Choke the perpetrator so he/she can't yell for help nor tell onlookers what is happening.

R=cause resistance by these methods:
1. Crush testicles causing severe pain
2. Crush kneecap causing severe pain

U=render victim Unconscious with TASER or via choking

M=Murder

The bald cop with his back to you can be seen squeezing and crushing the testicles of Deacon.  Anyone would thrash around if someone did this to them.

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by: amance @ Thu Jul 17, 2008 at 12:59:06 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

All Republican candidates are dangerous,

as they will continue to appoint the likes of Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court, and will yield to the will of religious extremists, whether it is Huckabee, Giuliani, or Romney.  I think I'd prefer it if Huckabee were the Republican nominee because he would appeal to fewer middle-of-the-roaders and a Democrat would be more likely to win.

Romney is the most dangerous, as he has no moral center and he's well spoken and handsome and I can see people who don't follow politics closely voting for him.

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by: Tomistocles @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 22:57:22 PM CST

Are you serious?

People with HIV/ AIDS have been intermixed with the general population all this time and all of a sudden Huckabee wants to propose isolating them? This guy is sick in the head and obviously has no sense about the virus. All he knows is that homosexuality is a sin and that some how connects with the spreadin gof the virus. He is a man of ideals and not rationality.

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by: Aquarian Prince @ Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 23:56:41 PM CST

We knew this was coming,

  It has been here for years.  These right wing religious jack asses have been saying it for years with very little opposition.  Lebarbera and his ilk have been spewing the "AIDS is the GAY man's disease" bullshit for ages.  Our politicians have not challenged the right wingers on this seriously enough, IMHO.

 It is bad enough that 40% to 50% of the American population believe the terrorists of 9/11 came from Iraq.  Knowing how these pukes spread there bad information, I wouldn't be suprised if the truth came out about AIDS and ALL the people that get this horrible disease are not gay, they then would say that AIDS was created by terrorists.

 One thing I love about my new job, I work with people from ages 19 to 60, I am 40.  The company has and requires all employees to attend a diversity training course that was updated a few months before I started, and it has people talking about all sorts of discrimination.  The vast majority of people that I have heard, have no problem with LGBT people. There are a few that have let there feelings known, and honest conversation has had an affect on changing those negative views.  And that is what is lacking from our politicians, honest debate.  

 The good thing is that the right wingers are being called on there past bullshit.  Their deception is being called out, and they are trying to stick to their old positions, instead of comeing out and saying they were wrong. That is what is happeneing with Bush now.

 And that is what is wrong with the top tier Democratic candidates now as well.  They were given a chance to tell the truth and didn't.  Instead they waffled in fear.  

 Truth wins everytime.  I don't care what the situation is, it will always win.  

If I make sense? it was quite by accident.

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by: HappyCat @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 05:23:51 AM CST

I never expected

the other Republican candidates to denounce Huckabee's hate speech equating us to liars and thieves. Even Giuliani who dressed in drag and lived with a gay couple has turned against us and gotten in line. Attacking the gays is a cherished tradition in the Republican Party. But doncha think it would have been nice and perhaps the right thing to do for the Dems to condemn him? But not a peep from our "allies".  Deafening Silence. Surprise Surprise. They only talk about gay equality at gay events where it's safe. COWARDS  

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by: Sage @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 07:18:50 AM CST

Minor flaws

I think I see some slight flaws in his immigration plan. First of all, if it was as simple as asking all 12 million people just to pack up the U-Haul and voluntarily leave the country, why didn't someone think of trying this earlier?

Also, for those who don't leave, if they are caught, they won't be allowed to re-enter the US for 10 years. I'm not sure how effective that would be, since they were never allowed to enter the first time, either, yet there they were. They will just come back in the same way.

Oh right, there is the massive wall they are going to build from sea to shining sea. But I wonder, where are they going to find the amount of the labor they will need for such a large project? I suppose they could hire Mexican workers to do it before they kick them all out. But even with the fence and all the monitoring, as long there is good money to be made in the smuggling business, there will be a border guard somewhere along the line who won't mind padding his income by leaving the monitors to refill his coffee cup at a particular time.

But even if all of the above were workable, you still have to ask, are you sure you really want to remove 12 million workers from your economy in such a short period? It would be a big hit to the nation's GDP. Some jobs certainly could be filled by American workers, providing the employer still feels he can make a big enough profit margin while paying a legitimate wage. But there are only 7.2 million unemployed people in the US, and even if every single one of them got a job, that would still leave a shortage of 5 million workers, which would mean a lot of businesses will have no choice but to shut down.

Still, this is just an early draft, and I'm sure Gov. Huckabee will find a way to work around those problems by the time he gets into office.

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by: Stephanie, in Victoria @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 07:44:33 AM CST

Your so right...

   Arizona is going through the same issue at this moment. The problem is that American citizens won't work for the same wages or if they will, they won't do the same jobs.

   People here in New Orleans were complaining about immigrant workers taking jobs from the locals after Hurricane Katrina. My sentiments were, there's a man who wants to work right now and you have a job you need done right now, are you going to wait until you can find a local citizen to move that pile of rubble, are you going to wait to move that truck from one job to the next? Besides, many Americans won't do menial labor any more. "Work" is below them. I did all my own labor when I had a construction related business, because the workers I hired were lazy, didn't follow directions, and were undependable and they were not immigrants. They were local people. The job entailed physical labor.

I'd rather be a lion for one day, than a sheep for my entire life.

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by: PhyllisMs @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 09:42:07 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Maybe we should isolate the fundies *sarcastic post*

Perhaps we should quarantine and isolate the fundies instead.

1. They wouldn't worry about AIDS because they would be seperated from its carriers (except for James Hartline).

2. Their ignorance is way more widespread than AIDS.

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by: Blood From Machines @ Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 18:55:22 PM CST

There is no excuse for ignorance

when the candidate is running for US Senate. Sorry, but in 1992, every literate American should have known that HIV was a blood-borne disease and not transmissable by casual  contact. I remember the entire course of HIV/AIDS, from the 1981 CDC MMWR report (I was a med student then) to present. I remember the hemophiliac children being barred from their schools by howling parents and administrators despite CDC statements that ordinary school contact was safe - this was front page news in the 1980s.

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by: NancyP @ Mon Dec 10, 2007 at 14:02:08 PM CST