You and Boies — you’re a version of Hepburn and Tracy in “Adam’s Rib.”
That’s a nice way to put it. I like that. I thought we needed someone who was a well-recognized lawyer but who would provide balance for my perspective. I wanted to convey the message that this was not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, that this is about human rights and human decency and constitutional law. …
Some people suspect you’re a double agent, a Trojan horse on this case. …
I think if it does go to SCOTUS, we actually do have a good chance at winning — based primarily on Antonin Scalia’s response to Sandra Day O’Connor’s caveat about Lawrence v. Texas. (Essentially, she said the right to privacy does not open the door to marriage equality; he said, oh yes, it does, and it’s only a matter of time before marriage comes up before SCOTUS, and implied that a case could be built citing Lawrence.)
But I’m very, very wary of Ted Olson and extremely suspicious of his motives — and not only because Olson was instrumental in bringing us eight years of hell in the form of George W. Bush.
May 26th press release from the American Foundation for Equal Rights:
Prop. 8 Challenged in Federal Court; Ted Olson & David Boies to Argue Case
Attorneys Argued Bush v. Gore on Opposite Sides; Now Joined to Strike Down Prop. 8
Here’s something interesting, especially for our more visually- (as opposed to verbally-) inclined readers.
Paying attention to the similarities among the traditionally big, blue, liberal, Democratic states, compare this current (as of March 5, 2008) primary map from McClatchy (green = Clinton; purple = Obama):
…with this final electoral map from the 2000 presidential election (red = Republican/Bush; blue = Democratic/Gore):
…with this final electoral map from the 2004 presidential election (red = Republican/Bush; blue = Democratic/Kerry):
Beautiful — just beautiful. We wish Al had seen the light years ago, but better late than never… and while we’ve always liked, respected, and admired Al, now we love the guy, without condition:
A young girl featured in a controversial television ad during the 2000 presidential campaign testified this week that the man who developed the commercial molested her for years and forced her to watch pornography and use sex toys.
The girl, now 15, told jurors Carey Lee Cramer — a 44-year-old political consultant who gained national notoriety when he released an anti-Al Gore ad showing a young girl picking daisy petals and ending in a nuclear blast — began molesting her in the third grade, when she lived in Mercedes with him, his then-wife and her younger brother.
The ad in which she and another girl were featured was a remake of one Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign used against Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964.
The girl took the stand Thursday in Cramer’s aggravated child sexual assault trial, which began June 7 in Hidalgo County before Visiting Judge Homer Salinas’ Auxiliary Court A. She continued testifying Friday.
Cramer’s defense attorney, Charles Banker, argues the allegations are false and stem from a custody battle over the son Cramer shares with his ex-wife, Samara Whittaker.
The girl shared graphic testimony. At times, she appeared to fight back tears and her voice quivered as she gave detailed accounts. …
As the Resident-in-Chiefdodges a trip to the Merry Old Land of Oz (where “The Bush” does not mean “Bush Country“), President Gore is scheduled to travel to Sydney and pick up the slack from our environmentally-hostile Boy King — Big Al is going to try to talk PM John Howard into signing the Kyoto Treaty. Of course, Howard is merely an even-less likeable version of Tony Blair, Junior’s pet poodle… which must make Howard Junior’s pet dingo. But I really shouldn’t say that; fantastic claims of Lindy Chamberlain aside, it’s a nasty thing to say about dingos.
Speaking of Poodle Boy, one of his advisors (soon, no doubt, to become an ex-advisor), Sir Jonathan Porritt, pretty much came right and said that the Iraq “war” was all about oil. “I don’t think the war would have happened if Iraq didn’t have the second-largest oil reserves in the world,” sez the ballsy Brit. If you’re not surprised to hear these words come out of one of Blair’s supposed suporters, then maybe you’ll be surprised the story was actually printed in a big U.S. news outlet: Bloomberg. I know I am. (Pleased, mind you, but still surprised.)
This sort of thing, naturally, provokes The Shrub to reprise his little “WMD will be found!” ditty — a song aired so often it’s gone past the point of overplay, and into overkill. Georgie, we don’t believe you. We never believed you. And if you manage to produce so much as a firecracker with a drop of mustard gas on it, we’ll believe it was planted. Give it up, George — you’ve done it to death, and destroyed your credibility; if we were were facing such “imminent” threat from all those fantasy weapons, somebody would have used them against us by now. What do you think those Iraqis are waiting for, anyway?
As they say in Texas, Ah’ll tell yuh whut: If somebody invaded my country, and blew my family to bits where they slept, and I had access to so much as a pea shooter, you can bet your shit-kickers I’d use it on the first invader I saw. What would I have to lose?
But, getting back to our British cousins: The Telegraph gave the U.S. a good kick in the slats over the differences in the ways our respective troops deal with Iraqi locals. Simply put, the Iraqis like the British better than the Americans because the Brits treat the Iraqis like human beings. I’m sure not every Yank is a psychotic Rambo pumped up on steroids, nor every Brit the Laurence Olivier of the battlefield; but I’m also certain there’s more truth in this story than anybody this side of the pond would care to admit.
“Our methods of dealing with the locals are very, very different from that of the Yanks,” notes one officer. “Unlike the Americans we have taken off our helmets and sunglasses and we look the locals in the eye. If we see one vehicle heading at speed towards a checkpoint we let it through. It is only one vehicle. We call our method ‘raid and aid’ — don’t ask me what we call the American way.”
What else have we today? Oh, yes — “Saving Private Lynch” is back in the news… a story I normally avoid like the plague these days, since it, too, gives me a rash. However, this is actually interesting: The medical staff who treated Lynch after her miraculous, awe-inspiring, heartwarming (and ultimately nausea-inducing) TV-movie-of-the-week rescue say the myth is, well, a myth. It’s a long story, but well worth the read.
Finally, the BushAssh- Nominee of the Day is Claude A. Allen — who has not only made his disdain for “queers” (in quotes this time because it’s his word) perfectly clear, and confirmed his enormous disconnect with reality by believing abstinence-only programs are the sole route to stopping the spread of HIV, but has demonstrated what must be an unfathomable amount of self-loathing, through his support of racist bigot Jesse Helms — who uses the N-word with the most casual aplomb; i.e., “I think all men are equal, be they sl-nts, b–ners or n—–s“. (Did I mention Allen is black?)
Okay, not all the news — just the stuff I’m ruminating on… er, on which I’m ruminating…
There was white stuff in Southern California last night — in the form of a great big snow job from Resident Dubs aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. He snowed them up north in Santa Clara, too — “them” being a crowd of hand-picked automatons pre-programmed to applaud wildly every time Junior stopped to take a breath during his sales pitch for his big tax cut. Hear tell major Silicon Valley leaders spoiled by a long and close working relationship with Presidents Clinton and Gore were not invited to the clusterfu—circle jer— speech.
Your intrepid analyst stayed up late last night finishing a long response to Dubbie’s talk to the troops, and decided to shelve the whole thing; it was just too long. Instead, kindly direct your attention to this most excellent open letter to the Commando-in-Chief, from the blessedly fair-minded San Jose Mercury News — which says everything we’d all like to say, but much more politely. This is a must-must-must-read you’ll truly appreciate, even if you’ve never been to the Golden State.
Couldn’t help but notice the Shrubster’s crowing, in both speeches, about how nicely the U.S. put the Taliban out of business in Afghanistan (you know — the country we laid waste to a year and a half ago).
Said Dubs: “In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed one of the most barbaric regimes in the history of mankind. A regime so barbaric, they would not allow young girls to go to school.”
Which makes today’s grammatically-awkward AP headline — Afghan Women Urged to Dress Traditional — a curious juxtaposition indeed. Don’t buy the no-big-deal tone of the story; Afghan women (at least outside of Kabul) are no better off than they ever were. Their oppressors are the Afghan warlords now — who are doing a lot worse than merely “urging” women to don the hijab.
So don’t let Bush & Rummy’s happy talk fool you. And, judging from America’s sorry track record, it’s an even-money bet that we’ll pull out and leave the country to its own grim fate, just like we did the first time around. (For news and commentary from those who really know what’s going on over there, you’ll find no better source than RAWA.)
Speaking of countries that hate our guts, what’s up with Iraq? Well, when I read the first headline this a.m., I thought I’d fallen into some parallel universe: The U.S. has decided to divide Iraq into three “military sectors,” divvying up duty among itself, Britain, and Poland. (Gee, guess Australia’s 2,000 elite SAS troops were no match for Poland’s 700 regular grunts — maybe the Aussies didn’t kill enough Iraqis to merit their own sector — and maybe that’s what Little Johnny Howard has come to ‘Murika to discuss with the Boy King).
Six more countries — Spain, Italy, Denmark, Bulgaria, Ukraine and the Netherlands — are going to help out in the British and Polish sectors, while the U.S. is telling the United Nations (remember them?) that although the U.N. can provide humanitarian aid, it won’t be “allowed” to contribute to peacekeeping efforts. Well, boo-hoo — the U.N. isn’t interested in playing Police Squad, anyway; Kofi Annan says he’s more interested in “political facilitation.” Good for you, Kofi — they’re going to need it.
Now, don’t get your hopes up that the arrival of all these new international troops are going to bring our men and women home any sooner; the influx of all those Italians and Bulgarians and the rest are only going to “augment” the troops already there.
Of course, France, Germany, and Russia all got the royal Dub Snub.
Meanwhile, the folks in Fallujah — where U.S. troops shot and killed a bunch of protesters last week — say they’ll start lobbing bombs (instead of mere grenades) at occupying forces if the U.S. refuses to clear out. The locals are Sunnis — and some of them believe the troops’ sunglasses offer X-ray vision. Yes, really.
Three-dot quickies: Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle again demonstrated his need for a spinal implant in another shameless display of sucking up to Sonny Bush… Maybe Ashcroft’s dog ate the fax (or the courier); either way, some evidence about false testimony from a key witness in the Timothy McVeigh trial was never revealed to the Oklahoma City bomber’s defense team… Finally, Col. Matthew F. Bogdanos (in real life, the lead prosecutor in the Sean “Puffy” Combs’ nightclub-shooting trial, and well-known pit bull), in charge of investigating the rape of Iraq’s National Museum, is trying to convince the public that — contrary to reports of more than 170,000 priceless antiquities stolen from Baghdad — no more than 25 are missing (which may just be his way of saying the other 169,975 were smashed to bits).
President Bush’s record on environmental issues is “the worst since the modern environmental movement began,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut said Tuesday.
The president “wants to protect the power plants that make out air dirtier instead of protecting the people that are hurt by that pollution,” said Lieberman, a Democratic presidential candidate, at an Earth Day news conference. “He wants to open up more and more of our public land to drilling and logging and mining. … He tried to roll back the protections to keep our water safe from arsenic poisoning.”
In addition, Lieberman said, “The president has done nothing but keep his head in the clouds when it comes to global warming.”
Fine, Joe — I’m all for anybody calling Bush on the carpet, but you lost any respect I once had for you a long time ago, and you wouldn’t get my vote in the primaries if you were the last self-proclaimed Democrat on the planet. You’re a DINO, Joe. You’re wishy-washy, you’re a Bush suck-up, and you’re further to the right than John McCain.
And before somebody hits me with the anti-Semite label, let’s make it clear that I’m talking about your record.
Frankly, every time you pop up in the news, I’m more inclined to believe you’re nothing but an elephant in a donkey disguise.
Look at you, Joe! Worse than the Dems who willingly but reluctantly (and stupidly) changed stripes to vote yes on Bush’s “war resolution” — Daschle, Clinton, Kerry, Biden, Feinstein, and all the rest — you were in favor of attacking Iraq from day one — and insinuated your beaming visage into every photo-op with the Little Cowboy, at every opportunity.
You supported a modified version of Bush’s “faith-based” initiative — why, I’ll never know (and I hate to suggest that a person should be judged by the company he keeps, but when that company is Rick Santorum — well, you figure it out). Do you actually think that load of doubletalk was ever intended for use by any organization falling outside the narrow definition of fundamentalist Christianity?
And what’s this with supporting school vouchers? I can’t decide if that’s as bad as the “faith-based” push — but your support of either isn’t one-tenth as appalling as your endorsement of Ashcroft’s T.I.P.S. program. What were you thinking? Did you really believe that a government-sanctioned spy on every American street corner would be a good thing? Were you one of those who said, “Only people who have something to hide should be worried”? Or was it something more than that?
In any case, I’m glad you did a one-eighty on T.I.P.S. — but it doesn’t inspire my confidence in you: Your about-face was typical of the way you backpeddle the moment it becomes clear that an idea is a most unpopular one.
Speaking of having something to hide — you’re an Enron payee, Joe! You accepted more filthy lucre both directly and indirectly from that icon of corporate corruption than any other Democrat in Congress! And when that uncomfortable little fact came to light, you mysteriously went silent on the issue of catching and punishing book-cookers.
And speaking of crooked corporate shenanigans, you sided with the Repubs (again!) and voted to override President Clinton’s veto of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act — a bill to protect corporate executives from shareholder lawsuits. Had you done the right thing and voted against the override, there might still be an Enron — in which case there would still be a whole bunch of Enron employees not out pounding the Texas pavement looking for work, and a whole bunch of Enron shareholders who might have fared this screwed economy just a little bit better had their life savings not been wiped out the minute the company collapsed.
Why, Joe? What’s the real reason you wanted to protect corporate executives from simple accountability?
And what in the world provoked you to attack Hollywood? Did Lynne Cheney sneak into your bedroom one night and bite you in the neck?
Finally, how dare you criticize Al Gore for being a “populist“? Worse yet, you went on television to undermine any hope of victory for YOUR running mate during the Florida recount. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! What, were you so pissed about losing your chance at a corner office in the White House for four years that you turned on Gore for revenge?
What kind of Democrat are you? Certainly not a loyalist. No, no, no — in my book, there’s only one name for you: DINO. Democrat In Name Only.
Sure, you’ve got a pretty good record on a woman’s right to choose, I’m grateful for your partial support of gay rights, and I was impressed that you drew attention to the union-busting addendum furtively inserted into the Homeland Security Bill. But, geez, Joe, if you went the other way on these issues, you would be a Republican. Even the most backhanded support of gay rights and trade unions is an absolute mandate if you want to keep people thinking you’re actually a Democrat.
And I do mean backhanded: On the gay-rights issue alone, you may have supported hate-crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), as well as ending the ban on gays in the military (even though you wanted to relinquish the dirty work of deciding how to deal with queer service members to the president, thus absolving Congress of any responsibility). You supported the nomination of James Hormel. You co-sponsored the Ryan White CARE Act.
Those are all great, Joe — but all these issues pale in comparison to your dual-whammy of voting in favor of the wholly discriminatory (and ludicrously named) “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), and in favor of barring people with HIV/AIDS from immigrating to the United States. (It isn’t TB, Joe. It’s isn’t even SARS. The only reason you have to be paranoid about immigrants with AIDS is if you plan on having sex with one of them.)
And let’s not forget that you voted in favor of an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, pushed by the hysterically homophobic Religious Right, to cut off federal funding for school programs that would “encourage or promote homosexuality” — an amendment proposed by none other than that rabidly anti-gay, racist paleo-con, Jesse Helms himself! What a dupe you were! You’re not a stupid man — and yet you failed to see that this was just another Helms ploy to feed on the anti-gay paranoia of Americans even more bigoted (and dense) than Helms himself.
Sure, you “recanted” your vote later, Joe — but you can’t take away those hateful words that came out of your mouth at the time: “Society should not be promoting the homosexual lifestyle.”
And you’re a Democrat? A champion of the underdog?
Yeah, right, Joe. Here’s a quarter — tell somebody who’ll believe it.
Well, anyway, thanks for slamming Bush’s anti-environmental environmental policies — we need high-profile people (even you) to speak out.
When $52 million and six years wasted on Whitewater and a couple of hummers don’t get you anywhere, go after Al Gore for a hundred bucks:
FEC Clears Gore Camp Over Web Address Buy
A complaint alleging that the sale of a Gore-Lieberman Web address to Democrat Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign for $100 amounted to an illegal campaign contribution has been dismissed by election officials.
The campaign paid the holder of the gorelieberman.com domain name, then-University of Maryland student David Jackson, fair market value for it, the Federal Election Commission said in a 6-0 decision released Tuesday. …
The Gore campaign paid Jackson $70 to cover the original domain registration fee, plus $30 as compensation for the time he spent registering the name, FEC attorneys found. That can be considered fair market value, the commission concluded.
Jackson originally offered the Gore campaign the Web address for free, but the campaign told him it had to pay for it.
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Okay, not all the news — just the stuff I’m ruminating on… er, on which I’m ruminating…
