NC Pastor: Put an Electric Fence Around Gays and
Lesbians to Make Sure They 'Die Out'

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Here we go again with another bigoted pastor spewing hate from the pulpit in North Carolina: Pastor wants to fence in gays:

At the rate we're going, we might need to create a special Rewrite category dedicated to North Carolina pastors. Violent rhetoric against gays and lesbians continued to be spewed from the pulpits over the weekend.

Pastor Charles Worley told his congregation at Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina he wants to put an electric fence around gays and lesbians in order to make sure they "die out." And that's a quote.

In our book, he officially overtook Sean Harris as the Most Offensive Pastor in the state of North Carolina. In Harris' hot mess hate sermon, as we mentioned before, he encouraged church-goers to vote against marriage equality, make "butch" daughters "smell like girls" and punch effeminate boys. They're making people like Rev. Dr. William J. Barbero of Goldsboro, North Carolina seem like a rarity.

Martin Bashir, filling in for The Last Word's Lawrence O'Donnell brought in Anthea Butler, Assoc. Professor of Religious Studies, University of PA, to discuss the recent increase in this sort of event, ever since President Obama came out in favor of gay marriage. I'd personally like to start seeing some of these churches lose their tax exempt status for this sort of thing, but sadly I don't think we'll ever see that happen.

Raw Story has more on the pastor's remarks and a planned protest of his church as well: North Carolina pastor: Send LGBT people to concentration camps to die:

During a sermon on May 13, Worley berated President Barack Obama for claiming that same sex couples should be allowed to marry.

?The Bible is against it, God is against it, I?m against it and if you?ve got any sense you?re against it,? he said. ?I figured a way out to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. But it isn?t going to pass in Congress. Build a great, big, large fence ? 150 or 100 mile long ? put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals, and have that fence electrified so they can?t get out, feed em, and you know what, in a few years, they?ll die out. You know why? They can?t reproduce!?

?I am not going to vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover,? Worley added. ?God have mercy, it makes me puking sick.?

Video of his comments were uploaded to YouTube on Monday by Catawba Valley Citizens Against Hate. The group plans to peacefully protest outside the Providence Road Baptist Church on Sunday, May 27.

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The most dangerous place for a child in America
is between a Palin and a TV camera

Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.comSarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, matters because the media refuses to stop printing what this emotional and intellectual child has to say.Then so be it. Let's have a look at a unvarnished look at this "rising star" of the GOP.Two weeks ago, Bristol weighed in about President Obama's support for marriage equality. She opined that the President was...

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GOP Madness, Sour 16, Match 7

Seriously, how could you guys vote down "oops"? That may have been the single most upsetting moment of this entire competition. "Oops" was finalist material! Heck, I was rooting for it to go all the way! How often do you get to see a frontrunner campaign self-destruct in 30 seconds, live on television?

Sob. I'm heartbroken. But I'll try to pull myself together and carry on. The bracket is here. Today's winner goes up against Santorum's rant against having sex for pleasure. Does Rick Perry survive this last chance to make the quarterfinals, or will we feature a Santorum-Santorum faceoff?

1. JFK MAKES RICK SANTORUM PUKE

His full comments:

To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?

That makes me throw up and it should make every American who is seen from the president, someone who is now trying to tell people of faith that you will do what the government says, we are going to impose our values on you, not that you can?t come to the public square and argue against it, but now we?re going to turn around and say we?re going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.

2. RICK PERRY SPEECHIFIES WHILE DRUNK. OR HIGH. (Or both?)

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Nebraska Governor: Let Majority Vote On LGBT
Nondiscrimination Protections

After Omaha passed an LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance in March, Nebraska attorney general Jon Bruning (R) issued an opinion that such policies were unconstitutional. Since then, Lincoln passed its own protections anyway. Now, Gov. Dave Heineman (R) believes both policies should be put “to the vote of the people.” In other words, Heineman believes that the majority should have the opportunity to vote on whether a minority is protected from the majority. Republicans claim to care about employment, but inviting voters to decide whether they want to be able to discriminate or not does nothing to help keep the LGBT community in their jobs.

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DC Comics Will Turn An Existing Superhero Gay

I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the announcement that DC Comics will, in a reversal of an existing policy, have an established character from their stable come out of the closet as gay.

In theory, I’m all for this kind of development. If you’re going to have multiple iterations of characters in multiple universes, one of the smartest ways to take advantage of that setup is to change the characters substantially so you see how people with different life experiences react to gaining great power and how they use it. Making Spider-Man a teenager of African-American and Latino origin is an opportunity to show us a different New York, one with public school entrance lotteries rather than gleaming research laboratories, an initial skepticism about his powers rather than a joyful enthusiasm, a set of family issues that make him vulnerable to S.H.I.E.L.D. bureacuracy rather than to his own inner demons. A gay superhero who comes out offers a new spin on covertness, secret identities, a new sense of what kind of people are vulnerable and need protection.

I just worry about how well this reveal will be done. A headline about Superman being gay would result in huge press for DC?Batman, by contrast, would retroactively make anti-comics crusader Frederic Wertham smile smugly in his grave?but that doesn’t guarantee that DC will be able to weave a coherent cloth between that old sense of a character and the new one. J.K. Rowling did a lovely job, I thought, when she revealed that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay: the information made all sorts of disparate elements of Dumbledore’s biography come together in a coherent whole. Comics characters have so much more history and backstory that it might be hard to find a character where a coming out story feels natural and clarifying rather than requiring a hard reset. And natural and clarifying, with a smart plan beyond the big reveal, should be the goal DC should set and the standard we should hold them to.

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Building Wind Energy Can Save Midwestern
Consumers $200 Per Year

By Richard W. Caperton

We?ve all heard that wind energy is too expensive, and that massive investments in wind will drive up electricity rates for consumers.  This argument is based on the belief that wind energy is more expensive on a per kilowatt-hour basis than traditional fossil fuels.  While even this premise is up for debate (for example, wind is now the least expensive option for new generation for some utilities in the upper Midwest), the bigger problem is that this argument ignores how electricity markets actually work.

According to a study by Synapse Energy Economics that was released today, electricity markets are structured in such a way that wind power will actually lower wholesale power prices, which can ultimately reduce consumers? electric bills.  The Synapse study, which was released at an event organized by Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, finds that making substantial investments in wind power (and the necessary transmission lines to bring that wind to market) could save the average Midwestern residential consumer as much as $200 per year in 2020.

The key to understanding how this works is something called ?price suppression?.  In competitive power markets, like the one managed by the Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO), power is sold through an auction.  Generators bid in a certain amount of power at a certain price.  When the market is functioning properly, the price is always the marginal cost of operating the power plant.  For a natural gas plant, the marginal cost is primarily fuel, with some amount of labor and other expenses.  For a wind turbine, the marginal cost is effectively zero, since there?s no fuel cost and there are minimal other operating expenses.  MISO has a supply curve, ranging from very low marginal cost resources like wind, through nuclear and coal, and ultimately ending at very expensive power from inefficient peaking plants fired with natural gas.

In these power auctions, the ?clearing price? is the price bid by the most expensive generator whose bid is accepted.  So, if the MISO market needs power from a costly peaking plant, the clearing price is very high.  Every generator receives the clearing price, no matter what price they bid into the auction.

The price suppression effect refers to the fact that when lower marginal cost resources come into the market, there?s less need for higher cost resources.  This reduces the clearing price, which is the price that utilities have to pay for wholesale power.  This is also known as the ?merit order effect? and is described in more detail in a recent paper on Germany.

The Synapse economists looked at how much bringing new wind power into the market would reduce clearing prices.  This leads to significant savings.  Then, they accounted for the fact that new wind requires new transmission by subtracting the expected cost of new transmission investments.  Finally, they assumed that not all of these savings would flow through to consumers, and cut the savings in half.

They ran several scenarios based on different amounts of wind, different transmission costs, and different mixes of fossil fuel generation.  This results in net savings for consumers ranging from $63 to $200 per year.

Unfortunately, consumers will only see these savings if more wind and transmission lines actually get built.  Making this happen requires protecting FERC Order 1000 (which sets out new processes for planning and paying for transmission) and state renewable energy standards (which require utilities to get a certain amount of their power from resources like wind) from attack.

While the Synapse study applies to a generic customer within the MISO region, it?s important to understand that the actual impacts on different customers will vary, and that this effect doesn?t necessarily translate perfectly to other power markets across the country.  For one, some utilities within MISO still operate as vertically-integrated businesses, which means that they purchase very little power on the MISO market.  These utilities? customers would likely see less impact on their electric bills.  And, this study essentially treats the spot market price as a perfect substitute for the overall wholesale cost of power.  In actuality, the wholesale cost of power is determined by a mix of spot market purchases, power purchase agreements, bilateral contracts, and utility-owned generation, and each utility has a different cost structure.  Identifying the actual rate impact of a specific wind investment on a specific customer is extremely complicated, and should be addressed through existing processes, including state public utility commission investigations.

MISO is also unique because it?s only an ?energy? market.  That is, only megawatt-hours are sold in MISO.  In other markets, like PJM in the mid-Atlantic of ISO-New England, utilities also buy capacity, measured in megawatts.  In those markets, generators whose income is reduced because of price suppression could theoretically offset some of that effect by bidding higher prices in the capacity market.  The actual impact of this is disputed, because many observers think that capacity markets function fairly poorly and market rules would likely prevent generators from increasing their bids.  For a more thorough description of this issue, see the Brattle Group?s analysis of the Atlantic Wind Connection.

Finally, there are some broader issues.  First, economic theory suggests that in the long term, generators will leave the market if their income (and thus profit) is reduced.  This would reduce the amount of available generation, and could very well offset the price suppression effect.  This is described by Frank Felder in his recent paper, ?Examining Electricity Price Suppression Due to Renewable Resources and Other Grid Investments?.  Second, it?s worth noting that there are practical limits to price suppression.  Imagine if 100 percent of the electricity were supplied by wind.  The logical conclusion would be that the clearing price would always be zero, and that electricity would be free.  Obviously, no one would build generation if this was the case, so markets will likely have to adapt to encourage more wind generation in the future.

At the same time, there are reasons to think that Synapse has undercounted some consumer benefits of building wind and transmission.  Most important, this study does not include a price on carbon, or any other pollution or externalities.  This alone would make it abundantly clear that wind power is a much cheaper alternative to fossil fuels.  And, not only does new transmission bring wind power to consumers, it will also help alleviate congestion on MISO?s grid and allow cheaper power to flow freely across the whole system.  This will reduce wholesale power costs, and is not included in the Synapse study.

Obviously, there always the potential for more research on issues like this.  But, this much is clear: price suppression can play an important role in reducing consumers? electricity bills, and the market impacts of bringing wind into competitive markets outweigh the cost of building the needed new generation.

Wind power truly is affordable, reliable, and clean.

Richard Caperton is Director of Clean Energy Investments at the Center for American Progress.

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‘Young Black Thugs’ Need To Be
‘Put Down Like The Dogs They Are,’ Says Louisiana School Psychologist

Mark Traina, a school psychologist in Louisiana, has been using his twitter account to spew racially-charged accusations about “young black thugs,” and now the Souther Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is highlighting his comments in a civil rights complaint against the Jefferson Parish School Board. The complaint alleges that black students and disabled students are sent to “alternative” schools at a significantly higher rate than white students.

Below are Traina’s most damning tweets about black people and Trayvon Martin:

We are faced with a young Black Army of Thugs who have declared War on the American Way of Life-Holding America Hostage as we speak!

— Mark A. Traina (@MarkATraina) January 14, 2012

Young Black Thugs have created an atmosphere of Fear throughout America. The Real Terrorist live among us! Not over seas! Right here and now

— Mark A. Traina (@MarkATraina) January 14, 2012

Protesters march in Florida town where Trayvon Martin was shot: Black people need to STOP shooting one another! mark a. traina

— Mark A. Traina (@MarkATraina) April 1, 2012

But Traina’s opinions go even further than personal hatred for black youth. On his twitter account, he also goes into his politics (“Can President Obama win re-election if almost two-thirds of whites are opposed to him?” he writes). He also voiced strong support for Alabama’s segregationist Governor George Wallace, Colorlines reports:

In another tweet about the Republican presidential primaries in March, Traina wrote, ?I grew up in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana – I am a Wallace Man at Heart!?

?It?s particularly alarming to have someone who works for the school system in a position of authority be pro-segregation,? Eden Heilman, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center told NOLA.com, referring to Traina?s remark about George Wallace, segregationist governor of Alabama.

The Jefferson Parish School Board is already investigating Traina’s tweets.

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Poll: 51 Percent Say U.S. Should Withdraw All
Troops From Europe

Rasmussen has a new poll out today finding that a slim majority of American “likely voters” think the United States should withdrawal all American troops from Europe:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe the United States should remove all its troops from Western Europe and let the Europeans defend themselves. Only 29% disagree, but another 20% are undecided.

Part of President Obama’s plan to cut nearly $500 billion in military spending over the next decade (DOD’s budget will still grow over that same period) includes cutting two Army brigades in Europe.

Back in February, CAP’s Lawrence Korb, Alex Rothman and Max Hoffman praised the Obama plan to scale back from Europe, adding that there is “no reason” to maintain such a large American presence there:

[T]he Obama administration?s plan to remove two brigades from Europe will focus U.S. military resources where they are most needed. There is no reason for the United States to continue stationing 70,000 troops on a stable continent that has more than enough resources to provide for its own defense.

The CAP report notes that the 2010 Sustainable Defense Task Force found the United States can reduce its troop presence in Europe and Asia by one-third without harming American security or interests.” Moreover, “withdrawing 33,000 troops from Europe and 17,000 from Asia — far more than Panetta?s proposed withdrawal of two brigades — would enable savings $80 billion over the next decade.”

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New Jersey Assembly Committee Advances Marijuana
Decriminalization Bill

On Monday, the New Jersey Assembly Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to send a bill that would decriminalize the possession of up to a half ounce of marijuana to the full chamber. The bill now goes before the full Assembly, where there are currently 18 co-sponsors of the bill. If the new law is implemented, first-time violators will be charged with civil offenses with punishments of up to $500 rather than jail time. Governor Chris Christie, who has publicly stated his preference for mandatory treatment programs rather than incarceration for non-violent drug offenders, has yet to take a position on decriminalization efforts.

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Catholic Leader Says Contraception Rule Strangles
Religious Freedom Despite Protections For Religious Organizations

Cardinal Timothy Dolan defended the lawsuits that 43 Catholic-affiliated organizations, including the University of Notre Dame, have filed against the Obama administration’s contraception mandate to expand coverage at no additional cost. On CBS’ This Morning, he told hosts Charlie Rose and Erica Hill that the regulation was “strangling” religious freedom even with the accommodations given to religious organizations:

DOLAN: What we’re worried about now is the exemption given to the churches is so strangling and is so narrow. [...] It’s that exemption, it’s the straight-jacketing, handcuffing exemption that we find to be very dangerous.

ROSE: So if the president said, I’ve tried to compromise here, I’m suggesting we let insurers pay for contraception. That’s not far enough for you?

DOLAN: That’s rather superficial [...] It still gives no attention to these choking mandates, this choking definition of religion that we find to be so strangling.

Watch Dolan’s comments here:

Under the new contraception rule, insurance companies will be required to provide the coverage free of charge and the employer will not pay for it if a nonprofit religiously affiliated organization like a Catholic college or hospital objects to offering birth control. The organizations may delay for a year before offering contraception coverage, and for organizations like Catholic hospitals that are self-insured, “third-party administrations” or another independent group will provide contraception coverage.

By calling the accommodations “strangling,” Dolan ignores how the administration has already addressed their concerns about religious liberty while also ensuring that women can still receive accessible, affordable contraception. Most Catholics disagree with Dolan’s and church leaders’ continuing opposition to the contraception rule, but Dolan would rather pick a fight than work toward finding a reasonable solution.

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