Thoughts for Sunday

We are confident. We have ourselves. We know how to sacrifice. We know how to work. We know how to combat the forces that oppose us. But even more than that, we are true believers in the whole idea of justice. Justice is so much on our side, that that is going to see us through. - César Chávez

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings. - Elie Wiesel

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. - Thomas Merton

I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you... And you... And you... Gotta give em hope. - Harvey Milk

Ohio loses more jobs

Last year, GM left the Dayton, OH area and loads of jobs were lost. Throughout the state, cities are dying.

Four of the cities in Ohio — Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland— are among the top 10 dying cities in America, according to an August 2008 report in Forbes.

Now NCR is leaving, too.

NCR, originally named National Manufacturing Company but later changed to National Cash Register Company, was founded in Dayton, OH in 1884. The company has built ATMs, barcode scanners, created the first transistor-based computer in 1957 in partnership with GE, and even code-breaking machines during WWII.

Now all those jobs will be moving to Georgia.

NCR Corp., a Fortune 500 company, will move its corporate headquarters from Dayton, Ohio, to Duluth, Ga., adding clout to metro Atlanta’s technology reputation.

NCR will relocate 1,250 corporate jobs to its Gwinnett County operation, a source familiar with the plan said. The company is also expected to launch a 550,000-square-foot manufacturing operation in Columbus, Ga., where it will employ nearly 880, the source said.

The state attempted to keep NCR's business. Governor Strickland even offered more than $31.1 million in economic incentives but it wasn't enough to get the deal done.

NCR CEO Bill Nuti and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland spoke by phone Monday evening, and Nuti told Strickland the company has been looking at Georgia for some time, an official in the Ohio governor’s office told Atlanta Business Chronicle sister publication Dayton Business Journal (DBJ).

Atlanta will now get more jobs (which is good for them, obviously) while Dayton and other cities like Youngstown, Canton, and Cleveland will continue to die.

The death of George Tiller

As doctor George Tiller stood in the foyer of his church this weekend, a 51-year-old Johnson County man named Scott P. Roeder allegedly shot him once, ending his life. Tiller has long been the target of harassment from anti-abortion groups because his clinic is one of the few in the nation which performs late-term abortions.

In 1993, Tiller was shot in both arms while at his clinic.

Bill O'Reilly has been reporting on Tiller since 2005. O'Reilly gave Tiller the nickname "Tiller the Baby-Killer" and called his clinic a "death mill" while saying of Tiller himself, he has "blood on his hands".

In the wake of Tiller's murder, Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and close friend of Tiller's said:

"I think it's the inevitable consequence of more than 35 years of constant anti-abortion terrorism, harassment and violence,"

What kind of harassment?

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993. Tiller was wounded in both arms. Shannon remains in prison.

The clinic was bombed in June 1986 and was severely vandalized last month. His lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings' downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.

Operation Rescue, an organization which claims "If you believe abortion is murder, act like it's murder.", lost their tax-exempt status in 2006 for illegal political involvement.
Randall Terry, the leader of Operation Rescue, released the following statement about Dr. Tiller's murder:

We are shocked at (Sunday) morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller's family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.

And then Terry released this video to various anti-abortion advocates.

...George Tiller was a mass murderer. He had blood all over his hands. Now we grieve for him that he was shot in this deplorable manner and he did not have a chance to get things right with his maker, perhaps. Every man deserves a trial of a jury of his peers and then a proper execution....

So Operation Rescue believes that abortion should be treated like murder and Mr. Terry thinks that every man deserves "a proper execution". Especially, "mass murderers".

People who knew the suspect echo similar rhetoric.

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."...

...Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.

"I met him once, and he wrote to me a few times," Leach said. "I remember that he was sympathetic to our cause, but I don't remember any details."

Killing babies is wrong but killing adults is...not as big of a deal? To many of these Conservatives, war and the death penalty are fine, too.

That's not pro-life. That is just anti-abortion.

Dinwiddie described how Roeder intentionally inspired fear in another doctor and his staff.

Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.

"Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she said. "Then he (Roeder) said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death.

Remember the DHS report that had so many right-wingers up in arms? On page 2 there was a footnote:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

Roeder is emphatically anti-abortion...to the point where he has intimidated doctors and subscribed to literature which condones murder. Other extremists in the anti-abortion movement knew him and supported his skewed and violent views.

As Terry and O'Reilly know, right-wing hate rhetoric has consequences. This weekend somebody decided to pick up a gun and end another man's life.

That's not being pro-life. That is murder.

Conservatives whine about "date night"

Republicans and right-wing bloggers are buzzing about President Obama and the First Lady having a "date night" in New York City.

he Republican National Committee slammed the outing in an "RNC Research Piece": "As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan’s theater district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills. ... Have a great Saturday evening – even if you’re not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense...

...The RNC's Gail Gitcho added: "If President Obama wants to go to the theater, isn’t the Presidential box at the Kennedy Center good enough?”

How horribly irresponsible of the President. It would be like a President awarding himself a one month vacation mere months into his Presidency.

Which Bush did.

Back in August of 2001, the Associated Press reported the following:

President Bush seems to bolt from the White House every chance he gets. He begins a monthlong vacation on his Texas ranch Saturday, and by the time he returns he will have spent nearly two months of his presidency there.

And that doesn’t include the many weekends he’s spent at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.

Where was all the righteous Republican anger when Bush spent so much time at his "Western White House"? There wasn't any. At all.

It is called hypocrisy and these guys do it all the time. See...it's OK when your guy does it. It's only bad when the other guy does it.