“Lesbians” as in “people of the Isle of Lesbos,” that is — who, I thought, have preferred to call themselves “Lesbosians” ever since we women-lovin’ women co-opted the word “lesbian” long before the idiots in this story were even born:
ATHENS, Greece — A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world’s gay women.
Three islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.
One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.
“My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” said Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” he said.
The three plaintiffs are seeking to have the group barred from using “lesbian” in its name and filed a lawsuit on April 10. The other two plaintiffs are women.
Also called Mytilene, after its capital, Lesbos is famed as the birthplace of Sappho. The island is a favored holiday destination for gay women, particularly the lyric poet’s reputed home town of Eressos.
“This is not an aggressive act against gay women,” Lambrou said. “Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want (the group) to remove the word lesbian from their title.”
He said the plaintiffs targeted the group because it is the only officially registered gay group in Greece to use the word lesbian in its name. The case will be heard in an Athens court on June 10. …
What a bunch of sanctimonious twits. I hope they lose their stupid lawsuit in a big way — after which we can all laugh at their pettiness.
I don’t care that he’s a Democrat, and I don’t care whether he said it during an endorsement, or was caught unawares in private. “Pansy” is, was, and always will be code for “faggot” — effeminate, weak, limp-wristed, worthy-of-disdain “faggot”. It’s a nasty slur, and if Easley doesn’t realize why it’s so offensive, he needs to enroll in Homophobia 101, pronto:
RALEIGH, NC — North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) made his endorsement official this morning, saying that Hillary Clinton “gets it” and is a fighter who he said “makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.”
In the course of less than one hour this morning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., did more damage to Barack Obama than any ten of his lunatic “God Damn America” rants from the pulpit.
Even the Obamaniacs are upset — yes, even the ones who have been screaming “Wright is RIGHT!” and “Obama could NOT disown his pastor” and “This is just a tempest in a teapot, a manufactured controversy, a non-issue — Wright won’t have any effect on Obama’s candidacy,” and all the rest of the “Blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah“ garbage that, these days, has about as much effect on those of us rooted in reality-based thinking as dragging one’s foot to stop a 747.
Well, guess what? The unending Wright story is not a tempest in a teapot — and now that virtually every MSM outlet in the country is leading with headlines suggesting big trouble for the Obama campaign, now the Obamaniacs are getting it. Now they’re screaming, “OMG, Obama’s got to DO something! Obama’s got to completely, totally disown Wright, right NOW!”
(The only thing that hasn’t changed: When one Obamanut expresses even a single, rational, independent thought, the rest of the Obamanuts eat their former comrade alive. But that’s the usual reaction when the collective cognitive dissonance of a cult is threatened.)
But I’m getting ahead of myself, as usual. In short, Wright did the unthinkable: he opened his mouth again. And this time, he may have sunk Barack Obama for good.
Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama’s presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama’s longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered — and added lighter fuel.
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks (”God damn America”) and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
In front of 30 television cameras, Wright’s audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama’s vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio’s April Ryan, confirmed that Wright’s security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.
Not that you haven’t heard Wright’s rantings about all these things (and worse, much worse) before, nor should it come as a surprise that he and Farrakhan are still the best-bestest of buddies. So what? So this: Just when you thought Wright couldn’t make things any worse for Obama, Wright dropped a bombshell, expressing what those of us not awash in Jesus Juice Obama-flavored Kool-Aid have been thinking, and saying, about Obama all along: Obama was forced to distance himself from Wright solely for the sake of politics, and if those Wright sermons hadn’t become public, Obama would still be calling Wright his “spiritual mentor”:
Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. “He didn’t distance himself,” Wright announced. “He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American.”
Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, “We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected.” The minister continued: “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.”
Joe Fitzgerald of The Boston Herald picked up on something similar Wright said to Bill Moyers: “He [Obama] says what he has to say as a politican. I don’t talk to him about politics.”
Please. When a man spends 20 years absorbing another man’s sermons, it’s reasonable to conclude his beliefs and values will be informed and shaped by what he hears; if not, the man doing the preaching must be woefully ineffective.
So take your pick: Either Obama is showing the electorate a face that’s insincere, or Wright showed the viewers a leader who’s inept.
Is Wright trying to sink Barry? “Maybe,” muses Amy Sullivan of Time, “Barack Obama skimped on his contribution when the offering plate came past at Trinity United Church of Christ. Or perhaps he nodded off during one of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. It’s hard to think of another reason why the Illinois Senator’s former pastor would put on the kind of performance this morning at the National Press Club that can only be described as a political disaster.”
Or maybe Wright’s ego is so swollen from the roaring cheers bouncing off the walls inside that echo chamber known as Trinity United Church of Christ, he thinks the outside world is no different from the insulated little cocoon he’s built around himself.
Sorry, Rev. Nobody who heard you this morning is shouting “Amen!” this time.
If you had a chance to listen to Rev. Jeremiah Wright — at his NAACP appearance in Detroit, or in his talk at the National Press Club — you came away with two impressions: first, Rev. Wright is a learned, compelling, often hilarious speaker; second, he is a genuine threat to the presidential hopes of Barack Obama.
His NAACP speech was shaped around the theme that “different does not mean deficient.” He talked about how blacks and whites were “different” in everything from language to music to religious worship. He interposed his speech with snatches from speeches, songs — at one point, brilliantly imitating the sharply different styles of marching bands. Michigan State, he demonstrated, simply did not move on the field the way the Grambling Band did.
He also offered a highly inclusive vision of the change America needed — rejecting exclusionary thinking whether it was white vs. black, black vs. white, straight vs. gays, Christians vs. Jews. There was nothing in that part of the speech that was objectionable or offensive.
Now, wait a minute. Wright emphasizes how “different” blacks and whites are, then waxes poetic about “inclusion”? I thought the goal was to appreciate our differences, while focusing on how we’re really all the same under the skin — yet Wright, in his comparison of two marching bands, makes fun of the way white people can’t dance? Hm.
Or, as the hard-right National Review put it — which will give you a good idea of how well this Wright business is going over with the tighty-righties Obama thinks he’s going to win over — in a piece titled “Jeremiah Wright May Have Just Sunk Obama’s Campaign:
And since then, it’s gotten worse, even with a Bill Moyers interview that wasn’t softball so much as it was Nerf Tee-Ball. We’ve heard Wright compare the Roman Legions who punished Jesus to the U.S. Marines, we’ve heard him argue that the U.S. and al-Qaeda are doing the same acts under different flags, etc.
Now we hear Wright analyzing the differences between white and black brains (!)…
Back to Greenfield:
So what’s the problem for Senator Obama? In his National Pres Club speech, we saw another side of Rev. Wright — utterly unrepentant about any of the things he has said, and insistent that the wave of criticism aimed at him was really “an attack on the black church.”
That argument is familiar — even pervasive. When a visible member group that has suffered exclusion is challenged, that individual is frequently heard making that argument. Senator Huey Long argued that attacks on his honesty were really attacks on the poor for whom he spoke; Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton both argued that attempts to hold them accountable for misconduct were really attacks mounted by their political enemies.
No kidding. If I had a nickel for every time an Obamanut called me racist for criticizing what Obama says and does, or went into a mindless rage at Hillary Clinton for something Obama said or did (what, did she cast a spell over Barry to make stupid remarks fall out of his mouth?), I would have a lot of nickels.
In wrapping himself in such an argument, Rev. Wright never even seeks to confront the core of the criticism: What did you mean when you said what you said? Why tell your congregation that AIDS was a government conspiracy to commit genocide on African-Americans?
[Wright] didn’t distance himself from any of the sentiments underlying the clips shown on television. Indeed, the former pastor embraced the most controversial items he has said.
On his contention that the U.S. government had created AIDS as a method of committing genocide against African-Americans, Wright referred to a hotly-disputed 1996 book “Emerging Viruses: AIDS And Ebola : Nature, Accident or Intentional?” by Leonard G Horowitz, which contends that AIDS and the Ebola viruses evolved during cancer experiments on monkeys.
He also referenced “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” by Harriet Washington, and said based on the Tuskegee experiment — in which the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a 40-year study on 400 poor black men in Alabama with syphilis whom they did not properly treat — “I believe our government is capable of anything.”
Greenfield again:
More broadly, Rev. Wright’s counterattack reframes the argument in starkly racial terms: “Attack me, attack the black church.” It is exactly the opposite what Senator Obama has been arguing throughout his campaign; that it is past time for the United States look beyond race. Indeed, Wright’s vision of this controversy strikes at the heart of Obama’s view.
Greenfield concludes — correctly — that Wright is stuck in a moribund mindset, seeming “not to believe that the United States has in any serious way come some considerable distance — and one of the surest signs of that is the plausible presidential candidacy that Wright’s comments have so seriously harmed.”
I’ve never dismissed the fact that racism still exists in this country — but Wright and his flock appear utterly unable — or unwilling — to process the fact that all whites are not stuck in the 19th-century.
Jeremiah Wright, however, is. He’s soaking in it. And for whatever unresolved personal issues he has with whites, his “ministry” appears to dedicated not to empowering disenfranchised African-Americans in any positive, progressive, forward-looking way, but to keeping the hate — and his own “us vs. them” mentality — alive.
Jeremiah Wright is not a stupid man, but one wonders if he suffers from some sort of incurable amnesia — and if he enjoys that amnesia, deliberately induced or not.
To wit (quoted from Tapper):
“Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy,” Wright said, since Farrakhan had not enslaved Africans and brought them in chains to the U.S.
Wright argued that his fiery nature was appropriate since the leaders of the U.S. have never apologized for slavery or racism.
Oh, really now? I knowwhat President Bill Clinton said in 1998 — and it sure sounded like an apology to my ears:
“Surely every American knows that slavery was wrong, and we paid a terrible price for [it], and that we had to keep repairing that.
“And just to say that it’s wrong and that we are sorry about it is not a bad thing.
“That doesn’t weaken us.”
What does Wright want, for every U.S. president, past and present, to get down on his knees? (In Clinton’s case, yeah, probably.)
That’s just another example of Wright’s deliberate blindness and stubborn insistence to remain entrenched in a view of a United States that has long since progressed beyond Wright and his antiquated — and divisive, damaging, dangerous — ideas.
One last thing: In demanding an apology for slavery, Wright said: “Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country’s leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I’m not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I’m still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?”
Yeah, capisco, loud and clear. What’s funny is that Wright would stoop to using the language of us “garlic noses” to make his point.
• Barack Obama says that in 2000, he was so broke, his credit card was declined when he tried to rent a car at LAX;
• Michelle Obama (who pisses and moans constantly about how rough she had it, skipping through life from private charter school to Harvard) says she and Barry were still heavily burdened by debt (specifically, by student loans from 1988 and 1991) until Barack’s book sales took off in 2005.
Despite these facts:
• In 1993, the Obamas put a $111,000 down payment on a $277,500 condiminum;
• In 2000, the Obamas earned a combined household total of $240,000.
After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client — a longtime political supporter.
Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell’s firm that eventually totaled $112,000.
A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.
Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments.
Obama’s staff said the senator advocated only for the first year’s grant — which ended up being $20,000, not $50,000. The day after Obama wrote his letter urging the awarding of the state funds, Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign received a $1,000 donation from Blackwell.
Uh, isn’t this sort of thing illegal?
Oopsy-daisy! My mistake! Apparently, this is just Chicago-style — or at least Illinois-style — politics as usual:
Business relationships between lawmakers and people with government interests are not illegal or uncommon in Illinois or other states with a part-time Legislature, where lawmakers supplement their state salaries with income from the private sector.
So, it’s not illegal. But you know what? It should be.
Now, you take this Blackwell wheeling-and-dealing (and there’s plenty more about it at the LAT link) along with Obama’s questionable dealings with Tony Rezko, and the way Obama got where he is today — plainly put, he was kicked upstairs by another close ally, the powerful Emil Jones, Jr., whom Obama rewarded with pork-barrel earmarks of “more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones’ Senate district” — and you’ve got to start asking just how “transparent” Barack Obama really is.
It shouldn’t matter a whit if Barry’s Peter-Pays-Paul dealing is legal; the question is: Is it ethical?
April 23, 2008 — Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin today called on colleagues in the House to recognize this year’s National Day of Silence to be held on April 25th. The annual National Day of Silence is a day in which students take a vow of silence to bring attention to the anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) name-calling, bullying, and harassment faced by individuals in schools, including students, teachers, and other school staff. The Day of Silence is coordinated nationally by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). An estimated 500,000 students from nearly 5,000 junior and high schools in all 50 states and Puerto Rico have participated in the National Day of Silence in past years and more than 6,000 schools have registered this year.
In remarks on the House floor this morning, Congresswoman Baldwin told her colleagues, “This year’s event will be held in memory of Lawrence King, a California 8th-grader who was shot and killed Feb. 12 by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. Larry’s death is an unnecessary reminder of what we already know: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students continue to face pervasive harassment and victimization in schools. As students use their silence to demand schools are safe for all students, it is my hope that we in Congress will use our voices to ensure that it be so.
GLSEN reports startling statistics:
• More than 80 percent of LGBT students have been verbally harassed;
• Nearly 20 percent of LGBT students were physically assaulted by their peers at school because their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression;
• Almost 40 percent of LGBT students reported that faculty and staff never intervene when homophobic language is used in their presence;
• Nearly 30 percent of LGBT students reported missing at least one entire school day in the last month because they felt unsafe.
Reps. Baldwin (D-WI), Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Lois Capps (D-CA) have sponsored a resolution (H Con Res 328) supporting the goals and ideals of the National Day of Silence. Baldwin said Congressional support sends a strong signal that harassment and hate crimes will not be tolerated in our schools and in our communities.
I take it back: Randi Rhodes is not merely a foul-mouthed misogynist — she’s a nasty, stupid pig. No, wait, I take that back, too, as it is an insult to pigs everywhere.
(So sue me, Randi; if you can call Hillary a “f—king whore” and compare Geraldine Ferraro to David Duke, I can call you a stupid pig. Or worse.)
I hope Nova M Radio is happy with their new talk show host, the Left’s own Rush Limbaugh. Randi Rhodes is a disgrace and an embarrassment to Democrats, and I can’t imagine why any organization (political campaign or business) would want to be associated with her hate-filled rhetoric.
In the first five minutes of her show today, Randi let this one go:
“The Clinton campaign describes Hillary’s voters as older, white, and undereducated. Or as we called them in my neighborhood: white trash.”
Randi followed this, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, with a screed about how Hillary is an elitist (in part, because she loaned her campaign $5 million). Tell us more about elitism, Randi. How do “white trash” fit into your analysis?
I don’t know if Randi Rhodes is helping or hurting Barack Obama, but I do know that she’s hurting the Democratic Party with this kind of divisive, classist language. White trash? That’s how she chooses to describe the majority of Democrats who voted in this year’s primaries? I wouldn’t be surprised if Randi finds herself back on the unemployment line soon.
Randi Rhodes, you embarass me as a woman, and as a human being — both species to which, at this point, I sincerely doubt you belong.
Oh, and Randi? You may not be any whiter than I am, but you’re sure as hell older older than I am, and as far as education goes, I’ll go up against you on “Jeopardy!” any day of the week. All that Kool-Aid you’ve drunk has obviously shrunken your brain to the size of a peanut.
Oh, no, I’m not being flippant about a death — I really do wonder what St. Peter had to say to Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the Vatican’s poster boy for a Dark-Ages mentality on same-sex marriage, stem cell research, and a woman’s right to choose, and who, most (in)famously, outright lied when he said condoms don’t do anything to prevent the spread of HIV. (The World Health Organization set everybody straight — so to speak — on that note, reiterating that condoms are 90% effective, and failure was usually due to improper installation.)
Not, mind you, that I really believe in the whole St. Peter/Pearly Gates thing; I don’t. But I’m a happy little agnostic quite content with the idea that wherever we end up, it’s of our own making: If you expect to see St. Peter, or some Pearly Gates, then you will.
But I digress, as usual.
Serendipity flowing freely this week, it was ironic, but rather satisfying in a mean, Schadenfreude kind of way, to hear that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (chaired by one of our few remaining heroes in the Democratic Party, Henry Waxman [D-Calif.]) is holding a hearing today to re-open the issue of whether or not abstinence-only programs work.
The reality is: They don’t. But as long as Radical Righteous Religionists exist — and as long as they maintain their stranglehold on our government — the reality of the situation needs to be hammered into many thick skulls before the U.S. gives up this killer (and I do mean killer) notion that if you withhold contraceptives and fact-based sex education, people will stop getting STDs, and stop having abortions.
What needs to stop is handing over taxpayer dollars to “faith-based” institutions that do nothing to decrease the spread of STDs or unwanted pregnancies, and in fact only serve to exacerbate the situation(s).
Sometimes it seems the only way to a new Age of Englightenment is to outlive the troglodytes who think they can pray the AIDS away. And so it is with an uncomfortable mixture of both sadness and relief that we mark the passing of Cardinal Trujillo: There was a man who stood no hope of being enlightened and reborn into a healthy, helpful, reality-based way of thinking, and now he’s gone. That’s the sad part. The relief (which troubles me to admit to) comes with the knowledge that there is one less powerful person on this planet standing in the way of countless millions being equipped with the knowledge and tools they need to save their own lives, and the lives of many others.
I’ll leave you with that thought, and with the ACLU’s writeup on today’s abstinence-only hearing — so my “faith-based” readers might understand that I’m not some sort of heartless ghoul celebrating the death of an “enemy.”
You see, Cardinal Trujillo called every struggle for control over our own lives and our own bodies, from same-sex marriage to euthanasia, a “culture of death,” when the truth is that lying about condoms and stem cell research and all the rest kills people. It is the Cardinal Trujillos of this world who propagate a “culture of death.”
Evidence Once Again Shows Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Don’t Work
WASHINGTON, DC — April 23 — The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing today titled “Domestic Abstinence-Only Programs: Assessing the Evidence.” The ACLU applauds Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) for bringing new attention to this deeply troubling policy and the committee’s willingness to examine the public health policy implications of abstinence-only programs. We look forward to the testimony of scientists, clinicians, researchers and youth activists who will report on the failures of abstinence-only education programs.
Their testimony is supported by research which has repeatedly shown that, at best, abstinence-only programs do not delay sexual initiation and, at worst, may actually cause harm by providing young people with dangerously inadequate and inaccurate information. A troubling recent report found teens in Florida, a state that relies on abstinence-only programs, who believed drinking a can of Mt. Dew would prevent unintended pregnancy, or drinking a capful of bleach would prevent HIV/AIDS.
In addition to the clear and compelling public health concerns of abstinence-only programs, the ACLU has submitted a statement to the committee addressing the civil liberties concerns raised by these programs. Abstinence-only programs censor information, reinforce gender stereotypes, provide inaccurate and misleading information, promote religion, serve a narrow ideological agenda, stigmatize lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, and jeopardize the well-being of young people.
“The evidence leads to only one conclusion: abstinence-only programs represent a failed policy,” said Vania Leveille, legislative counsel at the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “They are driven by ideology and politics, rather than by science or good public health policy, and our young people are suffering as a result. Most troubling, they represent a purposeful campaign to mislead, distort, stifle and censor, and are part of a disturbing trend to politicize science. The ACLU urges congressional action to bring this failed policy to an end.”
Since 1996, the U.S. government has poured more than a billion dollars into abstinence-only education programs so ineffective and dangerous that seventeen states have refused funding. At a time when the administration emphasizes accountability in funding only programs with demonstrated success, the continued funding of unproven abstinence-only programs is unacceptable.
The ACLU’s statement to the committee is available here
While scanning today’s headlines, two op/eds jumped out at me; seemingly unrelated, they say exactly the same thing: We — The Left — have lost control of the Democratic Party to the “liberal elites,” the rich, triangulating Third WayDLCers who talk a great talk, but have never walked the walk — and really don’t give a damn about your walk.
The first piece, by Dana Milbank at WaPo, profiles an impoverished Pennsylvania couple who are voting for Hillary Clinton today, and — despite the silly notion that they may not “even think [Barack Obama is] American,” and the extremely disturbing racism prevalent among a few other vocal locals) — their practical, economically-based reasons for refusing to vote for Obama, even if he gets the Democratic nomination (and this couple are Democrats).
The second piece is by Chris Hedges, about whom I’ve written before in these pages; Hedges is the author of one of my favorite and most dog-eared books, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, which explains in clear, if excruciating, detail just how the Radical Religious Right has managed to embed itself into U.S. politics — and, most importantly, why religious fundamentalists of all stripes believe what they believe, and do what they do.
Make no mistake: Hedges is not the radical leftist secularist of the Right’s worst nightmares. The son of a minister and seminary graduate himself, Hedges is equally critical of atheists as he is of religionists; in his newest book, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, he makes it clear that his belief in God and conviction that sin is real, and the barometer of morality, is steadfast:
We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility or the illusion that the material advances of science and technology equal an intrinsic moral improvement in our species. To turn away from God is harmless. Saints have been trying to do it for centuries. To turn away from sin is catastrophic. …
We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. …
The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent, that which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction.
Hedges’ credibility established, let’s turn our attention to the first op/ed that caught my eye today, by Dana Milbank:
The Monongahela River Valley lost its steel mills in the ’80s and, a quarter-century later, this sad town in the heart of the Mon Valley still hasn’t recovered. Its downtown is a collage of crumbling buildings, and its once-proud landmark, the 102-year-old People’s Union Bank Building, has signs in the window: “Bank Repo Sale. Excellent Deal. Eight stories. Priced to sell!”
It is, in short, just the sort of place Barack Obama was talking about when he said he wasn’t getting the support of blue-collar workers of the industrial heartland because they “cling” to guns and religion out of economic bitterness. It is also the place Obama chose to visit on Monday night, on the eve of Tuesday’s primary — and the reception here explains why Obama, the national front-runner, is expected to lose Pennsylvania. …
The Norgrens, who backed Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, will vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. And if Obama wins the nomination, these Democrats say they’ll vote for Republican John McCain, even though they want an end to the war in Iraq, where their soldier-son is about to start his third tour.
If Hillary Clinton wins Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary — and polls forecast that she will do just that — it will be because of white, working-class voters like the Norgrens. Yet the blue-collar voters poised to keep Clinton’s candidacy alive are also the reason she is losing the national race to Obama: Though still in charge here, they have lost control of the Democratic Party to the wealthy and better-educated. …
The average household in McKeesport earns less than $30,000 a year, barely half the U.S. average. Its population has shrunk and aged with the loss of the mills, and the average home here sells for a mere $45,000. …
The antipathy toward Obama isn’t necessarily logical. Outside the Giant Eagle … Edward Norgren listed his reasons: Clinton’s ad accusing Obama of taking oil-company money; Michelle Obama’s suggestion that she hadn’t been “proud” of her country; Obama’s provocative former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, of course, there was the “bitter” remark. …
The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers’ rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.
Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation’s political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves. …
The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us. …
The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. … Human beings are not, despite what the well-heeled Democratic and Republican apologists for the free market tell you, commodities. They are not goods. They grieve, and suffer and feel despair. They raise children and struggle to maintain communities. The growing class divide is not understood, despite the glibness of many in the media, by complicated sets of statistics or the absurd, utopian faith in unregulated globalization and complicated trade deals. It is understood in the eyes of a man or woman who is no longer making enough money to live with dignity and hope. …
The failure of the left is the failure of well-meaning people who kept compromising and compromising in the name of effectiveness and a few scraps of influence until they had neither. … The left has been transformed into anguished apologists for corporate greed. They have become hypocrites. …
Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage to challenge the corporate state that is destroying our nation, we will have squandered our credibility and integrity at the moment we need it most.
The message is the same — the Democratic Party has forgotten its core values, and we, the left wing of the (formerly-)left wing, have let the party get away with it. Of course, they’ve got the money — but we have the votes. The party can spend all the money in the world trying to schmooze us, but at the end of the day, when it’s your job that’s disappeared, and your kid who goes to school without breakfast, you have to decide what your loyalty to the party has gotten you.
The answer lies within the Democratic Party itself, in both its official platform (for which DNC has deemed the top three “key Democratic Party ideals” as prosperity, peace, and progress), and, more telling, in its simple, clear mission statement, “The Democratic Vision“:
The Democratic Party is committed to keeping our nation safe and expanding opportunity for every American. That commitment is reflected in an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.
What’s telling is that, in this statement, national security comes first — and is the first issue mentioned, again, at the beginning of the second sentence — and civil rights comes last, with the economy and vague, imprecise language about “expanding opportunity for every American” and “strong economic growth” jammed in between.
But you have to ask: What do those things mean? What do they mean, in practical terms, to you and your family?
If you take the time to read the full Democratic Party platform, you’ll see that “prosperity, peace, and progress” still take a backseat to more than 18 pages’ worth of discussion about defeating terrorism and strengthening our military.
As essential as it is to prevent another 9/11, the fact remains: If you’re hungry or homeless, you’re not going to give a damn about anything except food and shelter. That’s why the economy is the number-one issue on voters’ minds: We’re talking survival. And a whole lot of us aren’t surviving.
The latest Hightower Lowdown arrived in my mailbox yesterday; the entire issue is dedicated to spelling out, in many simple but terrifying tables, “What 8 years of BushCheney have done to our economy.” I won’t get into the whole thing here; it deserves to be read, and digested, in full. Suffice to say, if you’re not rich, you’re in trouble.
Nevertheless, you may be surprised to learn that economic fears are apparently not affecting votes:
With growing layoffs, tight credit and an ailing housing market, 67 percent say the economy is an extremely important issue, up from 46 percent in November. Gasoline prices follow close behind at 59 percent.
The war in Iraq — the dominant issue for several years — stands at 48 percent. …
Yet those who have become extremely concerned about the economy since last fall show no significant difference from everyone else in backing a presidential candidate. Both groups divide about evenly between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, and between McCain and the other Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton. …
People calling the economy extremely important lean toward the two Democratic presidential contenders, while those less concerned prefer McCain. The partisan divide helps explain that, as does income. Of those most worried about the economy, people earning under $50,000 a year prefer the two Democrats over McCain, middle-income earners are divided evenly, and McCain wins the most affluent.
Democrats divide between Obama and Clinton about the same whether or not they are extremely concerned about the economy.
While I’ve long believed (and still do) that a Hillary Clinton administration stands a far greater chance of restoring economic health in the U.S., it appears that voters see so little difference between A) the two Democratic candidates, and/or B) the two parties, that the most pressing issue — the economy — isn’t having much effect on voters who were going to vote Democratic (or Republican) anyway.
And that begs the question: Is there any longer a truly significant difference between the parties, on this or any other urgent issue on which the very survival of our people, and thus our nation, hinges?
Not that I’m advocating anyone vote Republican, mind you — that would be utter insanity. No; what I’m asking you to think about is just how far to the right the Democratic Party has shifted (on every issue, not just the economy), and, more importantly, what you are going to do about it.
Can the Democratic Party be fixed from within? That’s one option. But that’s what we’ve been trying to do all along, isn’t it? We’ve been holding our noses and voting a straight Democratic ticket, because we have no other choice — or so we’ve been told. And while we’ve been gritting our teeth and waiting for our party to return to the core values that made this country great, the big-money types keep dragging the party further and further to the right — and us along with it.
You know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results every time.
I just can’t do the insanity thing anymore. Where I go from here, I don’t know. The Greens, God love ‘em, cling too stubbornly to the idea that they can run a presidential candidate every term before building the party from the local and state level up (like the Republicans did — quite successfully, if you’ve noticed). I’m not a Libertarian (although, honestly, if Mike Gravel wins the LP nomination, I will be voting Libertarian for the first time in my life). What about the Socialist Party? As noble as Socialist goals are, no, I’m not so idealistic as to believe society can be rebuilt from scratch.
All I know is that I never left the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party left me.
The purveyors of lies, intolerance and inequality have done it. From Equality California:
They claim they did the unconscionable.
Extremist anti-LGBT organizations spent an unprecedented amount of money to pay people to collect signatures and are now saying that they succeeded in buying their way onto the November ballot.
The measure seeks to amend the California Constitution from being a document that protects all people to one that excludes us from equality.
. . .
EQCA is a leading partner in the Equality for All Campaign that is made up of leadership from LGBT and allied organizations fighting this dangerous initiative.
We estimate that the opposition spent well over $1.5 million to gather signatures. This means they’re serious about spending millions more to pass the amendment. We need to prepare for what will likely be the most expensive LGBT rights ballot measure in our nation’s history. Here’s what you can do:
* Make a donation to Equality California Issues PAC. We have to match them dollar for dollar. EQCA Issues PAC is committed to fighting this and every attack on our families and our community and every dollar raised will be spent to defeat this measure.
In the coming months our community is going to be tested in ways it has not been tested before. So much hangs in the balance.
Granted, Governor Schwarzenegger stated that he is against a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. But we need to fight this hateful initiative tooth and nail nonetheless.
Hat tip to Daniel Gonzales of Box Turtle Bulletin. He has created this wonderful video that lays bare the ugly truth behind the Day of Truth, the RRRW’s “answer” to the Day of Silence. It’s the day they push anti-gay propaganda on LGBT students, their allies, and everyone else. Fortunately the real truth is on our side, and here is just one piece of ammunition.
The senator also addressed several topics on Sunday including a local issue he has so far been reluctant to take on, legislation pending in Harrisburg that would ban gay marriage in the commonwealth.
“If I were in the state legislature, I would oppose it,” Obama said.
OK. So far, so good.
Obama’s silence on the proposed amendment to the state’s constitution has proven worrisome to local gay rights groups who have largely thrown their support behind Hillary Clinton and just two days before the primary he made his position clear.
It would have been better for Obama if he’d stayed silent, because he does make his stubborn opposition to marriage equality quite clear — and then in the same breath utters an idea we can’t make heads nor tails of:
“I’m not in favor of gay marriage but I certainly don’t want to see a court suggesting that somehow we can’t pass laws that say gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against,” Obama said.
“I’m not in favor of gay marriage” is clear — and certainly consistent; Obama has never wavered on the idea that our unions aren’t as good and worthy as his and Michelle’s, and we don’t deserve the same rights he has — but what in blazes is the rest of that confounded sentence supposed to mean?
“…I certainly don’t want to see a court suggesting that somehow we can’t pass laws that say gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against.”
Uh, m’kay, Barry. But — Mr. Consitutional Lawyer — is there such a thing as a “law” that says gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against? Maybe a resolution or two (or a hundred), but a law? And when did any court ever “suggest” anything (courts make rulings, not “suggestions”), much less rule that “we can’t pass laws that say gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against”?
What the hell are you talking about, Barry? Do you even know?
If we parse that sentence (and we’re trying!), it sounds like you’re saying you do want to see courts free to rule that gay and lesbian Americans do not face discrimination, thus clearing the way to discriminate against us — or to block legislation that would protect us against discrimination.
I’ll tell you what else it sounds like, Barry: It sounds like you agree with Greg Brophy!
In the end, only one thing is clear, Barry: You are opposed to my equality. Period.
A sign is causing heated arguments outside of a church in Jonesville (South Carolina).
Pastor Roger Byrd of Jonesville Church of God put the sign up which reads “Obama Osama humm are they brothers?”
Pastor Byrd says the sign is not meant to be racial or political but rather to make people think. “His name is so close to Osama I have a feeling he might be Islamic therefore he doesn’t recognize Christ,” Pastor Byrd said. …
Pastor Byrd told News Channel 7 he would ask his congregation to vote on whether to keep the sign. They voted unanimously to keep the sign up Sunday night.
Jonesville Church of God does not have any African American members.
After all, aren’t there a lot of “good, decent, moral people in this country who do not yet embrace their” Muslim or black “brothers and sisters as full members of our shared community”?
Regarding Scott E. Graham, who was found murdered in his West Palm Beach, Florida, home last week, and my denunciation of the Palm Beach Post for referring to him as a “homosexual activist,” David M—- writes:
I don’t know who you are but I was a personal friend of Scott’s. While “gay rights activist” seems more conventional and appropriate than “homosexual activist,” I mark up the Post’s gaff as having originated from the same ineptitude that lead to “investigator’s” rather than any kind of bias.
I personally am more concerned with the authorities bringing Scott’s murderer to justice than typos and semantics in the Palm Beach Post.
Dear David,
First, I’m so sorry for your loss. I know how empty that sounds, but it’s sincere.
Second: Absolutely, bringing Scott’s murderer to justice is issue number one. My take on the PBP’s reporting is that it heaps insult upon injury. We’re so demonized in life, it outrages me that we get even less respect in death.
Watch my “Life, Interrupted” video sometime; the violent death of any of us, no matter the reason, is an issue that affects me very deeply. That the dead among us have no voice provokes me to defend them more quickly, and more strongly. There’s not much I personally can do, but if coming down on a newspaper for treating a murder victim as an object instead of a human being makes even one person stop and think about the power of words, then that’s something.
I hope that makes more sense — that it’s not merely a matter of semantics, but a recognition of human dignity, and taking to task those who don’t (or refuse to).
LONDON — April 21 — Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship of women and policies of sex segregation stop women from enjoying their basic rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Saudi women often must obtain permission from a guardian (a father, husband, or even a son) to work, travel, study, marry, or even access health care.
“The Saudi government sacrifices basic human rights to maintain male control over women,” said Farida Deif, women’s rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch. “Saudi women won’t make any progress until the government ends the abuses that stem from these misguided policies.”
The authorities essentially treat adult women like legal minors who are not entitled to authority over their lives and well-being. Saudi women are similarly denied the legal right to make even trivial decisions for their children. Women cannot open bank accounts for children, enroll them in school, obtain school files, or travel with their children without written permission from the child’s father.
Saudi women are prevented from accessing government agencies that have not established female sections unless they have a male representative. The need to establish separate office spaces for women is a disincentive to hiring female employees, and female students are often relegated to unequal facilities with unequal academic opportunities.
Male guardianship over adult women also contributes to their risk of confronting family violence, making it difficult for survivors of violence to avail themselves of protection or redress. Social workers, physicians, and lawyers told Human Rights Watch about the near impossibility of removing guardianship even from male guardians who are abusive.
And even where permission from a male guardian is not mandatory or stipulated under government guidelines, some officials will ask for it. Despite national regulations to the contrary, some hospitals require a guardian’s permission to allow women to be admitted, agree to medical procedures for themselves or their children, or be discharged.
Officials do not always follow limitations on the power of guardians imposed recently by the government. Despite an Interior Ministry decision allowing women over 45 to travel without permission, airport officials continue to ask all women for written proof their guardian has allowed them to travel. Travel restrictions can also be humiliating for many women.
Fatma A., a 40-year-old Saudi woman living in Riyadh, cannot board a plane without written permission from her son, her legal guardian. “My son is 23 years old and has to come all the way from the Eastern Province to give me permission to leave the country,” she told Human Rights Watch.
A Saudi woman’s access to justice is also severely constrained. Women continue to have trouble filing a court case or even being heard in court without a legal guardian. Women are required to wear a full-face veil (niqab) in court and be accompanied by a male relative able to verify their identity. Saudi Arabia has established no minimum age of criminal responsibility for girls, while the authorities generally decree puberty as the threshold for treating children as adults.
“It’s astonishing that the Saudi government denies adult women the right to make decisions for themselves but holds them criminally responsible for their actions at puberty,” said Deif. “For Saudi women, reaching adulthood brings no rights, only responsibilities.”
By failing to eliminate these discriminatory practices, the Saudi government is failing in its commitment to guarantee women and girls their rights to education, employment, freedom of movement, health, and equality in marriage. In doing so, the Saudi government ignores not only international law but even elements of the Islamic legal tradition that support equality and full legal capacity for women.
Human Rights Watch calls on Saudi Arabia to take immediate action to address the human rights abuses resulting from male guardianship policies. The Saudi government should abide by its international obligations and dismantle this grossly discriminatory system. The king should establish an oversight mechanism to ensure that government agencies no longer request permission from a guardian to allow adult women to work, travel, study, marry, receive health care, or access any public service. The authorities should establish female sections or other accommodations in every government office and courtroom in order to ensure women have equal access to every level of government.
We’d love to know what these folks would say about this jerk using “short people” as a pawn in his cruel attempt to mock gay Coloradans — and make a mockery of the law as well:
The debate on the Senate floor over a bill that would expand the prohibition of sexual orientation-based discrimination became personal and emotional this morning after a senator offered a rhetorical amendment to ban discrimination against short people.
Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, withdrew the stunt amendment after arguing that there is no need for the bill because he has not seen evidence that gays and lesbians are discriminated against when seeking a job or a home.
“What I’m talking about is economic discrimination, political discrimination, employment discrimination,” Brophy said. “I find no pattern of any of those.”
Brophy’s comments outraged Democrats, who took turns at the lectern denouncing his argument with angry and sometimes shaking voices.
“It must be nice,” said Sen. Jennifer Veiga, a Denver Democrat who is sponsoring the bill and who is gay, “as a white male to sit back and mock the real discrimination that occurs in our society, especially on the basis of sexual orientation.”
Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, came close to tears when recalling the ugly fights surrounding the state’s Amendment 2, which prohibited laws protecting gays and lesbians and which the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned.
Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, spoke about his son, who is gay and who moved to Oregon to be a prosecutor several years ago because he felt Colorado was not accepting of him. …
And Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, said he was disgusted by Brophy’s amendment.
“Discrimination is a practice that has gone on in this country too long,” Groff said. “It is the birth defect of this country. And I think it’s time we deal with that.”
Of course, a handful of other Republicans tried to shoot down SB 200, which would prohibit discrimination “on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, places of public accommodation, consumer credit, labor unions and school enrollment, among other areas,” using the same old, tired, brain-dead arguments about crippling “a free society” — you know, the usual transparent idiocy the Wrong Wing parrots every time they’re threatened by the possibility that we homos might actually be recognized as human beings under the law.
The good news is that SB 200 passed a voice vote; it “still needs a final vote in the Senate before heading to the House.”
Let’s hope Colorado hasn’t forgotten the lessons learned from that travesty called Amendment 2.
In the meantime, we suggest some enterprising Democrat in the state legislature introduce a bill prohibiting discrimination against ugly people.
That’s right, ugly people. While we certainly see no pattern of “economic discrimination, political discrimination, [or] employment discrimination” against ugly people — like Sen. Brophy; after all, his rubbery visage, evil-clown smile, beady little eyes, and criminally awful haircut didn’t impede his political career, did it? — the more we look at that mug of his, the more we think that’s not a face every employer would want greeting customers in a store, or peering out from behind the desk of a hotel concierge. So why not pre-empt anti-ugly discrimination before such unfortunates as Sen. Brophy ever feel its sting?
We think somebody so butt-ugly as Sen. Brophy would appreciate such a bill.
Tulsa, OK — A judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Oral Roberts University of wrongfully terminating two professors who uncovered alleged wrongdoing by the school’s former president. …
In denying motions to dismiss the suit, Tulsa County Judge Rebecca Nightingale also tossed out some of the professors’ allegations, including breach of contract claims. The judge also threw out libel claims against the defendants, but kept the professors’ allegations of slander and defamation. …
“But I ‘corrected’ them, sir.”
In other related good news, Tim Brooker, one of the profs suing ORU, tells the insanely right-wing OneNewsNow that “superstar televangelism” is just about dead in the water:
Tim Brooker … says it’s no coincidence that many high-profile televangelists are facing investigations over possible financial irregularities. …
Since the lawsuit [against ORU] has been filed, Richard Roberts resigned as ORU president, and in an unrelated move, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) began an investigation into the financial practices of six high-profile televangelists.
However, Dr. Brooker is under the impression that the timing is not coincidental. “I think God is doing a corrective work in the [body of Christ], and I think that many of the abuses and distortions of doctrine that have been allowed to take root and grow are … being corrected,” he believes. …
More about God’s “corrective work” (Is that like a stock market correction? If so, we’re praying for a Black Friday to hit the telefundamentals reeeal soon!) at the link.
The Obamas often say they would still be in debt if not for his best-selling books, which began to swell the couple’s bank account in 2005. In fact, for some period of time, Michelle Obama tells audiences, the couple’s college loan payments cost them more than their monthly mortgage. …
Still, it’s hard to tell just how broke they were, when and for how long.
Public records paint only part of the financial picture. In 1993 they bought a condominium in Hyde Park for $277,500, paying about $111,000 as a down payment, according to county real estate records.
As for income, they earned a combined household total of slightly more than $240,000 in 2000, according to tax records they have since made public. (Their income fluctuated in that range until 2005, when they reported earning $1.6 million.)
But it’s unclear how much their college loan debts were, and aides to the Obama campaign said last week that they could not immediately provide records to clarify. …
Somehow, a $240,000 income doesn’t quite compute as “broke,” does it?
If Barry’s credit card was declined (maxed out, perhaps?) the year his household income was $240,000, that’s not “broke” — that’s an indication he wasn’t managing his money very well. In fact, that sounds like mismanaging his money, very, very badly.
That, or his memory is just terrible.
And as for those student loans Michelle keeps whining about, she graduated from Harvard in 1988 and Barack graduated in 1991. If they could afford to put a $111,000 down payment on a $277,500 Hyde Park condo in 1993, then why weren’t they paying off those student loans before 2005?
No doubt by now most of you are aware that the Day of Silence is April 25th (and the “Day of (un)Truth” follows on the 28th). Lance Bass, formerly of *NSYNC, has contributed his time to this wonderful PSA for the DOS.
We’ve lost another one of our own to violence. Whether this was a hate crime, or something else, we’ll have to wait and see.
In any case, it’s our loss.
But first, a big thumbs down to the Palm Beach Post — not for its ignorance of plural versus possessive (”investigator’s”), but for using the highly offensive, Bush-era, right-wing slur, “homosexual activist.”
WEST PALM BEACH — Police identified a body found Wednesday morning at 113 Ellamar Road as that of high-end interior designer Scott E. Graham.
Graham’s family identified him through photos taken at the medical examiner’s office.
Investigator’s [sic] wouldn’t say what killed Graham, a successful businessman and homosexual activist. But they were treating his death as a homicide.
Lt. Chuck Reed said the body had “obvious signs of foul play.” …
Reed also said police found Graham’s garage door half-open and front door unlocked when they arrived at about 11 a.m. Wednesday. …
…you have to provide a valid email address. We get a LOT of crank/hate mail, and some of what we’ve been getting lately has been downright… weird.
It’s simple: If there’s something we want to clarify with you, and we can’t reach you, that’s the end of the one-sided conversation.
And we don’t publish every comment we get, especially when it sounds threatening, looks like it’s been scratched out by a drunken chicken, or is suspiciously similar to the last three comments that have arrived from different email addresses (all of which bounce when we try to reply to them).
So if you’re going to comment, and you want a reply, or any hope of seeing your comment published (which we are under no obligation to publish at all), you have to supply a valid email address. Purty simple!
We now return you to your regular programming…
I hate to waste space with this kind of administrivia, so I’ll add: Hey, Obama supporters! Stop blaming ABC, George Stephanopolous, Charles Gibson, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Socks Clinton, God, Satan, or John Foster Dulles. Your guy bombed last night. He screws up every time he has to wing it without a script, but last night was absolutely pathetic. The only thing Gibson and Steph did was ask him the same questions the public has been talking about for months — and your guy couldn’t handle it. So suck it up, quit your whining, and think about how crummy you feel after you’ve spent all these months gloating about your Messiah.
(Yeah, I’ll have more to say about the debate later.)
In Obama’s eyes, it all depends on who’s legitimate, and who’s not.
I keep saying there’s a larger pattern to everything Barack Obama says and does, and — while most people out there really don’t give a rip about our piddly little civil rights struggle — we can begin to see where Obama’s bullheadedness and tunnel vision come from, by looking at the big picture, in this case, Obama’s perspective on one of the most volatile, sensitive areas any U.S. president will ever face… and one in which the wrong decision could kill us all.
(Relax, he’s not president, and he hasn’t decided to nuke Iran or invade Pakistan. Yet.)
Let’s review:
• Barack Obama agrees that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is a terrorist organization.
• But Barack Obama is willing to meet — “without precondition” — with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran (as well as with the leaders of “Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea”).
• Barack Obama criticizes former President Jimmy Carter — the guy who brokered the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty — for meeting with Hamas, because “Hamas is a terrorist organization.”
In detail:
April 24, 2007
Obama co-sponsors S.970, the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007, Section 16(d) of which designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (a branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran military, of which current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a member, during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war) as a terrorist organization:
(d) List of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations- Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury shall report to the appropriate congressional committees on the efforts of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury to place the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189) and the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order 13224 (66 Fed. Reg. 186; relating to blocking property and prohibiting transactions with persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism).
July 23, 2007
At the YouTube debate, in answer to the question, “[W]ould you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” Obama replies:
I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.
I have said, unlike Senator Clinton, that I would meet directly with the leadership in Iran. I believe that we have not exhausted the diplomatic efforts that could be required to resolve some of these problems — them developing nuclear weapons, them supporting terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. … That has not been tried. Not only has it not been tried, but reports indicate that it has been explicitly rejected by the Bush administration. That is a policy that I intend to change as president of the United States.
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday backed the Bush administration’s policy of shunning contact with the Islamic militants of Hamas in its Middle East peace diplomacy.
The Illinois senator has said he would break with President George W. Bush’s stance of declining to talk to some other international adversaries but that stance does not apply to Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and is committed to the destruction of Israel.
Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday disagreed with former President Jimmy Carter’s overtures toward Hamas, saying he would not talk to the Islamist group until it recognized Israel and renounced terrorism.
The Illinois senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania which holds the next presidential voting contest on Tuesday, told a group of Jewish leaders he has an “unshakable commitment” to help protect Israel from its “bitter enemies.”
“That’s why I have a fundamental difference with President Carter and disagree with his decision to meet with Hamas,” Obama said. “We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by past agreements.”
“Hamas is not a state. Hamas is a terrorist organization,” he said.
Ohhhh! I see now! Obama will meet with the leaders of all sorts of states (even rogue states, like North Korea), because they’re states, and Hamas is not a state.
In Obama’s eyes, one is legitimate, and the other is not.
Never mind that Iran’s “Ahmadinejad has clearly stated his intent to annihilate the State of Israel and also provides generous funding, advanced training, equipment, weapons and other support to Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations that attack Israeli citizens daily.”
Don’t even whisper that, or you might send Barry into an unstoppable fit of the ums and uhs and y’knows that always tumble out of his mouth when he’s caught off-guard, and off-script.
Nope, never mind that Iran is a sworn enemy of the State of Israel — one of its “bitter enemies” Obama has an “unshakable commitment” to help protect it from — and yet he wants to have a coffee klatch with that punk Ahmadinejad? But… Never mind that. Right, Barry? Barry…?
And never mind that Obama insisted, while talking to a group of Jewish voters in Pennsylvania:
“We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements.”
Barry might go absolutely catatonic if he has to explain why it’s a bad thing to “negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction,” while it’s a good thing to negotiate with a terrorist state intent on Israel’s destruction.
It’s not a black-and-white issue, not a one’s-a-state-and-the-other’s-not proposition. Unfortunately — and very unfortunately for the rest of us, should he actually get into the White House (shudder) — Barry doesn’t do “shades of gray” very well at all.
But isn’t Obama all about getting to the table with these people [Hamas], no matter how distasteful? We can be as offended as we like by the tactics of Hamas. But they’ve got a very real, and very political backing in the Palestinian territories. True, they are not a state actor. But it is hard to imagine a lasting peace agreement that ignores them. they simply have too much support in the region.
It’s not a one-off situaiton [sic], either: A study out this week notes that Nasrallah, the head of Lebanese Hezbollah, is the most respected Arab leader on Earth at this moment. Hezbollah and Hamas are not that far apart, and are frequently linked, at least by Israel. Can the continuing Israel/Hezbollah animosity be solved without the invovlement of Hezbollah? No.
I’m not saying they’re not both terrorist groups. From our perspective, and Israel’s perspective, certainly they are. Now, does this mean that Obama as a US president should sit down with them? No. Not sure that should be done.
But should he necessarily be critical of a former president who does? …
As Obama has noted, diplomacy can insist on an American leader sitting down with folks seen as strong enemies of the US. That is no reason not to meet with them. In fact, it’s an argument for why we should meet with them. …
[I]n a sense, Carter’s meeting serves this country, and the region. It’s a way to get to the table with people we can’t really otherwise talk with.
But if that’s not the case, if meeting with such folks is simply wrong, bad, and betrayal of trust, then isn’t Obama’s whole view of diplomacy a bit naive?
Easy answer: No — it’s a lot naïve.
I tell you, folks, if Barry — in all his naïveté, in all his black-and-white thinking — ends up being the one with his finger on the button, we’d all better start thinking about building bomb shelters in our backyards.
Last October, I mentioned that The Bahamas was (were?) finally started to wake up to the reality that if you treat homos like garbage, homos won’t spend their vacation dollars in your island/country/town.
It ain’t rocket science.
Of course, not too many homo-haters in this country, the Grand Ol’ U.S. of A., are even close to rocket scientists. Sally Kern — about whom Buffy has written extensively on The Gaytheist Agenda — would be lucky to pass a course in the Science of Tying One’s Shoes.
Luckily, Oklahoma is not filled with Sally Kerns (although we do question the very humanity of the dipsticks stupid — or just hateful — enough to vote for her), and is beginning to understand that homophobic hatred could cost the Sooner State some serious money.
Not that we Sneaky Homosexual Agendaists were planning to descend en masse and rename the place Oklahomo; no, it’s this, via The Journal-Record:
OKC Chamber: Kern spooks big biz relocation consultant
OKLAHOMA CITY — A San Francisco Bay-area financial services company has not yet ruled out Oklahoma City for a major office relocation, a vice president of a real estate search firm confirmed. A decision is expected in three to four weeks.
But Tom Maloney, vice president of California-based Staubach Co., would neither confirm nor deny that the 1,000-employee, AAA-rated client company’s top executive is a lesbian who expressed concern over Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern’s recent anti-homosexual statements, as has been the topic circulating among local business leaders.
Roy Williams, president of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, said the issue is a major concern the chamber is trying to address. He confirmed a Staubach consultant was troubled by Kern’s comments during a recent visit to the city.
“He told us straight up … ‘I cannot recommend to any of my clients that they should consider Oklahoma City because of that,’” Williams said. “When you have one of the nation’s premier relocation experts making those statements, you should pay attention to that and not dismiss it.
“And that’s immediately what happened: People said, ‘Well, then tell them not to come here.’ …”
At the Commerce Department, Business Services Deputy Director Sandy Pratt said … Kern’s comments have not been raised as a concern: “It did not come up in any of the governor’s economic development team meetings with consultants or discussions we’ve had with consultants,” Pratt said. …
As for Kern’s comments, “They no doubt send a message out there that no city wants to send, and that is one of divisiveness instead of unitedness,” [Williams] said. For the last five years, the chamber has made a greater effort “to embrace differences and embrace diversity, to build a community that is open and welcoming to anyone.”
Well, that’s a very nice sentiment, Mr. Williams, but while Oklahoma City may be “open and welcoming to anyone,” the state of Oklahoma is very much stuck in the Dark Ages, thanks to your constitutional ban on marriage equality.
Sally Kern aside — and seriously, who is Sally Kern but just another dunderheaded bigot who’s done us the favor of showing the public just how mean and stupid homophobes can be? Sally Kern is a flyspeck in the cosmos. It’s the people of Oklahoma — the ones who decided to legislate their own gay and lesbian neighbors into permanent second-class citizenship — who are the problem. It’s nearly impossible to comprehend that the marriage ban isn’t Staubach’s biggest concern: Staubach’s LGBT employees will have no rights in Oklahoma.
Interestingly, Indianapolis is also on Staubach’s list of potential new homes. Wake up, Staubach — Indiana is hardly better than Oklahoma; aside from the fact that Indiana refuses to recognize any same-sex marriage, civil union, or domestic partnership established in another state, and aside from the fact that a state constitutional ban on marriage equality failed in February, the issue is far from dead: Both houses of the state legislature favor a ban, and there’s an ongoing push to put the issue to the voters. And (especially when you consider that over the past seven years, only one state, Arizona, was able to beat back a marriage amendment) you know what that means; to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin (and mix in a little Ayn Rand), when you allow the majority to vote on the rights of a minority, you’ve got two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Staubach, you need to reconsider this move. I’m assuming you want to leave California because it would be cheaper to do business somewhere else.
But you’ve got to ask yourselves which is more important: money, or doing the right thing.
Meh, I know: It’s business. And money always trumps the right thing.
You know me. I have my own channel on YouTube. I recommend YouTube to everyone I know. I wouldn’t if I didn’t love YouTube, which I do. YouTube is the greatest thing since Al Gore invented the Internet.
But you guys are strictly out to lunch on one thing: You make it absolutely impossible to report abuse.
Oh, I know: If I see an inappropriate video, I can flag it. No problem there.
The problem is that you provide no way, anywhere on the YouTube site, to report cretins like this one:
I found this hateful little lowlife spewing his homophobic filth all over the comments section of a video honoring victims of anti-gay hate crimes.
Here are some examples:
hangthefaggot (15 hours ago) I remember some dumb liberal fag saying straight marriage is evil and that only fags could be allowed it because they can’t violate marriage. What the hell?!? Fags cheat on their butt buddies all the time and if it wasn’t for straight people, you fags would not have even been born.
hangthefaggot (15 hours ago) Some fags do rape women and little girls. This is because they want to get back at straight people.
hangthefaggot (15 hours ago) You don’t think fags can be promiscuous? Of course they can! They are rarely any fags who have a single butt buddy. They just jump in bed with one fag, get tired of him, and shout “NEXT!”.
There are other equally disgusting remarks, from other equally disgusting imbeciles (e.g.: “lprevatt”: “u r absolutely right, the transexuals or shemales, whatever this things r called, in my opinion they are just weird creatures and they should die . GOD PLEASE, KILL ALL THEM! They spread diseases, they have promiscuos’behaviour. KILL THEM with another disease please!”), but my concern is with this “hangthefaggot” creature.
It’s the username, you see.
Do you approve of this username, “hangthefaggot”? Are there not even the most rudimentary filters in place to prevent such a username from being created in the first place? Could someone conceivably create the username “hangthen****r”? Would it be allowed to stand for at least ten days (the time since “hangthefaggot” first joined YouTube)?
YouTube, I would have been more than willing to keep this issue between you and me, but, as I said, you make it impossible to simply contact you to say, “Houston, we have a problem.”
The only way I can get in touch with you is through an open letter.
So, I ask: Are you going to do anything about this monster that calls itself “hangthefaggot”?
Your words of encouragement have convinced me to keep blogging on the Newswire — and to keeping the clueless Mr. Obama honest.
I can’t answer every message individually (or I’d never start blogging again), but I want to thank you, from the heart of my— er, the bottom of my heart.
(As for one not-so-thrilled correspondent, you can’t get an answer if you leave an invalid email address. This means you, “jdrac@yahoo.com”.)
So, it’s back to work for me.
Thanks again, folks. Tune in tomorrow, same gay time, same gay channel.
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