By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Apr 10, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
An historic week for equality in my old (conservative) Kentucky home…
Despite the fact that a recently released 2012 poll showed that support for marriage equality among Kentucky voters dramatically trailed the national average at an embarrassing 33% approval clip (although, I imagine that has ticked higher in the intervening few months), leading statewide elected officials are courageously coming forward to endorse marriage equality.
Early yesterday LEO Weekly magazine’s Joe Sonka broke the news that Kentucky’s Lt. Governor, Jerry Abramson, became the first active statewide official to endorse marriage equality.
Within a few hours, state Auditor Adam Edelen bravely took the plunge as well. Edelen declared his support for marriage equality because:
“I believe equal protection of the law and equality of opportunity are central to the American experiment and they ought to apply to every American.”
(And let’s give Joe Sonka some mad props for his simple, but groundbreaking questioning. Tweet at the dirty liberal columnist: @JoeSonka)
But most of all, please join me in expressing our support and gratitude to Auditor Adam Edelen for his courageous public statement by signing on to this petition below:
Thanks Auditor Edelen for Supporting Marriage Equality!
I may be a card-carrying knee-jerk liberal, but I do my best to understand opposing points of view. (Maybe it was all my years as a high school & college debater, where you had to argue convincingly on both sides of any question.) I may not like their reasoning, but I can see why gun enthusiasts worry about any new laws, or why people who view life beginning at conception would try to ban abortion – They have something at stake. However, I have yet to see a single way in which allowing same-sex marriage does anything at all to heterosexual marriage. Divorce rates are down in Massachusetts, kids still play hockey in Canada, and the “it’s not natural” argument has been thoroughly debunked, not just by psychologists but by the volume of evidence about animal homosexuality being perfectly natural. Bonobos do it, birds & bees do it, and probably educated fleas do it. (Apparently there are even bisexual flowers and trees!)
The most recent arguments against marriage equality have gotten even more ludicrous. First there was Sue Everhart, the Georgia Chairwoman of the GOP, who claimed that same-sex marriage would encourage fraudulent marriage claims in order to get federal benefits, but neglected to explain why people don’t do that already with straight marriage. Then Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon & new darling of the right, stuck his foot even further in his mouth by using a weird series of fruit analogies (??) to explain that just because he linked gay marriage, pedophilia and bestiality in an argument against gay marriage, he didn’t really mean it. But Dr. Carson is just the most recent marriage equality opponent to bring animals into the discussion. Rick Santorum used the ‘slippery slope’ argument almost 10 years ago, Bill O’Reilly once famously claimed people would want to marry their pet turtles, and recently Texas Representative Louie Gohmert digressed from his opposition to limiting ammunition magazine sizes to opine that we needed some limits or people would start marrying animals. As Jon Stewart ranted last week, “What’s with all the animal f-&#*%ing?”
Even Bill O’Reilly has seen the writing on the wall, and recently drew fire from his fellow conservatives by correctly stating that most of the objections to marriage equality involved bible-thumping rather than rational thinking. And as more and more conservatives have children who come out to them, I think we’ll see more conscience-driven switching. Of course, as a humorist, I’m still hoping for one of the more staunch opponents to be caught tickling his interns or playing footsie in an airport men’s room, but in the meantime, might I suggest that anyone who is still against marriage equality start using an argument that doesn’t involve nature or animals. And while they’re trying to come up with one (good luck!), here’s a musical look at the whole animals argument:
In the Spotlight: Goal of No Labels is to get lawmakers to stop fighting
By Jonathan Miller
Democrats and Republicans in Washington can’t seem to agree on much these days, but four members of Illinois’ congressional delegation are working to change that by joining No Labels’ fast-growing group of Congressional Problem Solvers. The group — first announced just two months ago with a dozen members — now features 55 members who are meeting regularly to build trust across the aisle.
Reps. Rodney Davis, Adam Kinzinger, Dan Lipinski and Cheri Bustos are part of something unprecedented. Ask any member of Congress and they will tell you that before the advent of the Problem Solvers, there was literally no forum where rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans could actually meet together to discuss solutions. It’s a shocking revelation and a big reason why dysfunction has dominated D.C.
With Democrats controlling the U.S. Senate and Republicans controlling the U.S. House of Representatives, no one can get everything they want. Our Problem Solvers recognize that they have to find a way to work together or else they will get nothing done
In linking up with No Labels, the Illinois representatives are helping supercharge a movement that is growing by the day. I helped launch No Labels in December 2010 as a group of Democrats, Republicans and independents dedicated to a new politics of problem solving. Today, we have hundreds of thousands of grassroots supporters across the country. We have a growing presence on Capitol Hill, as evidenced by the emerging Problem Solvers. And we have a serious government reform agenda that is gaining traction.
In fact, the Senate passed a budget for the first time in four years last month thanks in large part to a measure that No Labels created and pushed relentlessly. We have an idea in our Make Congress Work! action plan called No Budget, No Pay that is as simple as it sounds: Members of Congress don’t get paid if they don’t pass a budget on time.
A modified version of No Budget, No Pay passed as part of the debt ceiling extension bill in February, and clearly compelled Congress to get serious about timely budgets.
We’re just getting started. On April 16, I’ll be flying the No Labels flag alongside an exciting lineup of speakers at the “Returning Civility to Our Public Discourse” Symposium at Bradley University in Peoria. The event is open to everyone. In the meantime, you can visit NoLabels.org to learn more about how regular citizens can get our leaders to stop fighting and start fixing America’s problems.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 9, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
You can call me Al. Or at least an Al lover. Al Jarreau, that is.
In high school I tried to get into the heavy metal music that was popular at the time. I tried and failed.
That more I caved to peer pressure and tried to pretend I liked the dense, loud, manic lyrics belted out by AC/DC and Black Sabbath, the more drawn I became to what, I suppose, could be called its opposite: the melodious and soulful harmonizings of a little known singer (at the time) named Al Jarreau.
I remember having more Al Jarreau cassettes in my car than any other musician in 1979. But I would never play them when a friend was in the car. But when I was alone, it was Al and me.
My first great love affair with music was with this man’s remarkable voice.
Coates’ theory is that Carson is the latest phase of an eight year initiative, “a Republican plan”, to locate a black conservative to counter Barack Obama. As evidence, the existence of four black men who have flickered in and out of the spotlight during Obama’s ascension: Alan Keyes, Michael Steele, Allen West, and Herman Cain. In pulling together these loose strands, Coates overlooks an array of inconvenient facts—that only one of them, Steele, emerged as the product of any sort of party-wide process; that West openly complains that national Republicans ignored him during his failed congressional reelection; that Cain was about as much a product of a grand Republican strategy as Michelle Bachman, who surged for about as long as Cain did; and that Keyes was not so much hand-picked, more a self anointed sacrifice with a history of parachuting into quixotic races.
The only vague line connecting all four, much less all four and Carson, is their sharing of the same skin color. Coates takes that and runs with it, with the very same snide cynicism that he charges conservatives have practiced in elevating these “Black Hopes of the moment.” It is the left’s usual penchant for dismissing conservatives, with the underlying innuendo that a black conservative’s advancement is a fraud that could never transpire without conspiracy or the hand-out of affirmative action. In other words, the same poison that Coates’ writings routinely suggest is at the root of any right-winger’s skepticism of black accomplishment, from Obama all the way down to the corner office.
I have no doubt that a part of Carson’s appeal is that he is vivid proof that not every black embraces an activist, expanding government. But at the risk of upsetting both Coates’ and Sean Hannity’s narratives, I see Carson more in the vein of, say, a Bill Gates or a Mark Zuckerberg, spectacularly successful achievers whose run of success earns them a public policy stage. That makes Carson not a race pawn, but the beneficiary of a common American archetype of making all purpose experts and role models out of gifted people.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Taking Ben Carson Seriously
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Apr 9, 2013 at 9:00 AM ET
In this morning’s LEO Weekly magazine, Joe Sonka breaks the news that Kentucky’s Lt. Governor, Jerry Abramson, has become the first active statewide official to endorse marriage equality.
“I don’t believe government should judge which adults can and which cannot make a loving, life-long commitment to each other. That’s why both Madeline and I support marriage equality for all adults.”
Mazel Tov to a real mensch, and a true leader for Kentucky.
Please join me in expressing our support and gratitude to Lt. Gov. Abramson for his courageous public statement by signing on to this petition below:
Thanks Lt. Gov. Abramson for Supporting Marriage Equality
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Apr 9, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
I am pretty strong. I have been known to be impressive to my neighbor on the treadmill next to me and to the occasional trainer at Equinox. However, I suck at Pilates. My core is my kryptonite. My husband does Pilates religiously and I keep hoping that the osmosis will kick in, but no such luck. I keep striving nonetheless, because they say that core strength is what matters. And I find that to be true when it comes to the spirit as well.
Think about standing, with your core engaged, as someone tries to push you over. You feel the push but you can stay steady. If your core is not engaged, you might just fall right to the pavement- ouch. Now apply that metaphor (did you get yet that this is a metaphor?) to dating. You meet someone and have a few dates, only to be flat-out rejected. If you are strong in your spiritual core, you will jump right back onto the dating bandwagon and turn your Cablight on. If your soul’s six pack is only a two pack, then you may just seclude yourself with a box of Entenman’s and resolve never to date again. Pilates for your soul is what you need.
A client of mine coined the phrase of being “in the vortex.” I love that concept. It refers to that feeling when you’re aligned with the universe, everything is going your way and you can create any outcome you want. I felt that way when I met my husband. I’ve felt it at many points in my life. But what’s hard is to bring yourself back to that feeling when you’re off your game. When you wake up in the morning in a funk, on the “wrong side of the bed,” how do you get back into the vortex? Pilates for your soul.
This involves affirmations. And I know your thinking Stuart Smalley right now and you are getting skeptical. (That is if you are old enough to remember when SNL was really funny.) But affirmations do work. And the power of positive thinking can be very powerful. I have helped a lot of people find love and sometimes it just comes down to believing love is out there and remaining unwavering. Strong at your core. Pilates for your soul.
If you meet someone and you are all excited and you start to tell your friends and your mom and they start making you doubt yourself, do not waver. Strong at your core. Pilates for your soul. Don’t even tell people your dating stories (unless you’ve hired a professional like me.) People have the best of intentions but they will always have their own agenda, whether it’s conscious or otherwise. They will try to throw you off your game- they can’t help it- it’s a natural principle. So you have to be strong at your core. Have a picture of how your story ends and stick to it no matter what. Practice your pilates so that no one can throw you off your game. Do your spiritual crunches, in other words, your affirmations. Spend a few hours per week just thinking about what your life will be like when you have the relationship that you’ve always wanted. Picture every detail and then start searching. It won’t take long.
And if you start to falter, just channel Stuart and you can’t go wrong:
“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.”
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: Pilates for Your Soul
Now that supporters of growing industrial hemp have the groundwork laid in Kentucky, a bipartisan group of officials is now turning to Washington to get the go-ahead to grow the crop.
Jonathan Miller, the former state treasurer and a member of the industrial hemp commission, said the request could be made of the Obama Administration before June. Those who will likely play a role include Republican Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth of Louisville.
“In the next few weeks or so, sometime this spring, we’re gonna go up — Commissioner (Comer), a couple of the board members possibly myself. We’re going to gather with our bipartisan delegation,” Miller said. “Sen. Paul and Congressman Yarmuth are playing the point and start meetings with Obama administration officials. The thing with hemp it is an issue that it involves a lot of different agencies. At the center is the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency. They’re the ones who will be making the ultimate decisions.”
But Miller said those are not the only agencies with an interest in industrial hemp. He said the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Energy are all interested in the crop, which could mean more avenues for the group to seek support for a federal waiver.
“Getting (the agencies) together on the same page is going to be our critical element,” Miller said. “It might take some time, but I’m confident from what I’m hearing from my friends in Washington that there is a lot of interest from a lot of important people that want to legalize hemp. Or at least it allow states like Kentucky that have a waiver to be able to do it on their own.”
…
And Miller said he supports legalizing marijuana, but that does not mean everyone who supports hemp on the commission also supports marijuana.
“I support legalizing marijuana. I came around after Gatewood Galbraith died, and I dedicated a few months to looking at his critical issue and I realized that he was right, but other hemp supporters like Commissioner Comer aren’t for legalizing marijuana,” Miller said. “Hemp and marijuana are very different.”
The Pew Research Center shows that for the first time a majority of Americans favor legalizing the use of marijuana. And that Miller said is good news for proponents of legalizing industrial hemp.
“The fact that there is a majority of Americans out there supporting legalizing marijuana. There is probably a super super majority of Americans that support legalizing hemp,” Miller said.
And Miller said that super majority could be the political difference for passing the law in the United States.
“President Obama has the opportunity without taking the risk of angering all the people who are opposed to marijuana legalization and appeasing those of us who support both by legalizing hemp or at least allowing states to do a waiver,” he said.
