Tuesday November 16, 2004

The McKinney And Henderson Award...

Roger Ailes notes that Andrew Sullivan's alleged cameo on the upcoming ABC 20/20 whitewashing of the murder of Matthew Shepard, makes the whole affair stink even more...if that's possible...:

Sully "Grab Ass" Sullivan is fired up in anticipation that ABC News's 20/20 program will speak in mitigation of Matthew Shepard's murderers:

Now ABC News has prepared an important, thorough and debunking review of what happened. I was tangentially involved in the documentary, but wasn't privy to its most closely held findings. I have a feeling it will reveal how dangerous it is to rest an entire political argument on one incident, whose details were always murky and subsequently turned into myth.

Something -- quite a few things -- stink here. Most obviously, it's not clear how Sully knows the "documentary" will be an important, thorough debunking since he doesn't know what ABC's key findings are, and only "has a feeling" what the program might reveal.

The New York Post article to which Sully links claim that Shepard's killers now deny the killing was motivated by bias. Case closed. If you can't take the word of murdering, crank-dealing muggers who are seeking to make themselves look good and who are contradicting their earlier admissions, who can you trust?

As described, this whole project has the whiff of John "Make Shit Up" Stossel and his right-wing agenda. And the fact that Sully claims he was "tangientially involved" in the report makes it sound even more questionable. Sully has no first-hand knowledge of the circumstances of the crime or the participants' motivations. His only purported contribution is his vehement opposition to hate crimes laws (and his willingess to misrepresent them). If the program's focus is "what happened," the question of what the law should be is totally irrelevant. Unless the program is wingnut propaganda passing as news.

To that I'd only add that, in fact, the details of Shepard's murder are anything but murky. That was always one of the distinctive features of the case, that everyone who was actually involved in investigating it has remarked on. Everything, all the evidence, all the facts of the case, were not only in plain view from the beginning, one detective even remarked later that it was as if God had spread out a perfect crime scene for them to find. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, mysterious or murky about what happened that night. Any fog of mystery surrounding it now is completely and utterly the manufacture of the anti-gay right, and their useful bedboys like Sullivan.

Sullivan once said he became a Tory because he hated the left so much. So here he is, unsurprisingly, helping the right whitewash a brutal anti-gay murder, again because he hates the left, which supports hate crime laws. Shepard's murder made clear to people why those laws are necessary. The pistol beating of the 105 pound young man, that left his skull broken, had the grisly overkill quality to it that is the hallmark of gay bashings. Suddenly the nation saw not only that hate was killing gay people, but how vicious that hate was. The right has been alternately trying to vilify Shepard as a sexual predator who got what was coming to him, or whitewash the whole affair as a robbery gone bad, ever since. But the circumstances of Shepard's death are grimly familiar to anyone who has witnessed anti-gay violence. Sullivan would literally rather have gay people die violently, then allow the left to get hate crime laws enacted, not because those laws are wrong, but simply because it would be a victory for the left.

That he is a party to this 20/20 report only clarifies its essential political nature. Sullivan was not there during the investigation, and did not attend the trials or talk to the principals. He has nothing to bring to the table other then a political point of view regarding hate crime laws. Ailes is right...this whole thing reeks of John Stossel, the right wing propagandist who has a track record of looking his viewers in the face and lying through his teeth to them. But we'll see which ABC talking head it is that actually takes a few more whacks at Shepard's body I suppose, when its broadcast...

I am going to tape the broadcast, and make a list of each and every advertiser on it. I'll post it here when its over.

Tales From George Bush's America...(continued)

When arrested for sexually assaulting a gay man in Texas, make sure you ask for a jury trial...

The three defendants, along with a juvenile suspect, were charged with aggravated sexual assault and aggravated robbery after they picked up the victim, whose name is being withheld due to the sexual nature of the allegations, from Oil Can Harry's, a gay bar in the Warehouse District, and returned to his apartment, where they alledgedly began assaulting him.

...

Roy Minton, the attorney for both Gay and Bockman, said the two will plead not guilty to their charges, which both carry sentences ranging from two to 99 years in prison.

...

According to the Austin Police Department affidavit, on July 17 when the defendants arrived at the victim's apartment, they began punching and kicking him, bound him with the cord from a vacuum cleaner and held him at knife- and sword-point while forcing him to sodomize himself with a sex toy.

One man recited New Testament verses condemning homosexuality and said the attackers were "passing judgement" on the victim for "being a faggot and a queer," according to the affidavit.

The affidavit said they "ransacked" the apartment and stole cash, the victim's driver's license and a collection of swords and daggers before leaving the apartment.

Both Bockman and Gay confessed to beating and robbing the victim and identified the other suspects, but denied that the sexual assault took place, according to the affidavit.

Minton said Gay and Bockman did not admit to police that they broke the law.

"There really isn't any confession," he said. "That's just the police officer writing down something, because it sounds good."

He said the affidavit doesn't reflect the whole story that his defendants told police.

"All deny that there was any assault altogether," Minton said. "Except that Darren [Gay] admits he struck the victim when he was making completely untoward conduct with his younger brother."

All together now: Gay Panic Defense.

The World Watches, As The United States Belly Flops Into The Gutter...

Who didn't see this coming back in March of 2003? Anybody?

"I would have shot the insurgent too. Two shots to the head," said Sergeant Nicholas Graham, 24, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "You can't trust these people. He should not be investigated. He did nothing wrong."

Actually, he committed a war crime. But let it be said his superiors actively worked to create the climate in which that war crime was not only likely, but encouraged. Just days ago President Smirking Fratboy Suckerpuncher told the world that the man who justified torturing prisoners of war was to become his next attorney general. The days since have seen U.S. Helicopter gunships shooting down families trying to escape Fallujah. Those helicopter crews weren't doing that on their own initiative. There is just no way this shooting of an unarmed prisoner of war is an isolated case. It is standard operating procedure, in a war built on a bedrock of lies, damn lies, and laughing in your face lies.

Marines have repeatedly described the rebels they fought against in Falluja as ruthless fighters who didn't play by the rules. They say the investigation is politically motivated.

"It's all political. This Marine has been under attack for days. It has nothing to do with what he did," said Corporal Keith Hoy, 23.

Guantanamo Bay. Abu Ghraib. Playing by the rules anyone? Except we're fighting in the name of democracy and the rule of law over the rule of tyrants. Saddam Hussein was an evil man. He murdered Iraqi men women and children for the sake of his own bottomless greed and ambition. But what is worse...that a single man does great evil, or that evil is done in the name of, and in fact the blessings of, millions of American citizens. In Iraq they are saying now that the student is gone, and the master has arrived. If that is how the common Iraqi citizen sees the United States of America, after having lived with our troops on their soil for over a year now, then America has failed not just them, but every principle of liberty and justice we have ever stood for. But that seems to have been the will of the voters two tuesdays ago. This war is a defilement of both democracy and the rule of law, and even if our own news media would rather jerk the public off then tell it what is being done in its name, the rest of the world is watching, watching, watching the United States drag the fight for democracy and the rule of law backward about a hundred years. They'll never look at us the same way again.

A Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal

James Dobson...notify your lion handler...there are still a few Christians living in America...

Slouching Toward My Lai...(continued)

Destroying America, in order to save America... Part One:

Friday, the Marines were fired upon by snipers and insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades from a mosque and an adjacent building. The Marines returned fire with tank shells and machine guns.

They eventually stormed the mosque, killing 10 insurgents and wounding five others, and showing off a cache of rifles and grenades for journalists.

The Marines told the pool reporter that the wounded men would be left behind for others to pick up and move to the rear for treatment. But Saturday, another squad of Marines found that the mosque had been reoccupied by insurgents and attacked it again, only to find the same wounded men inside.

Four of the men appeared to have been shot again in Saturday's fighting, and one of them appeared to be dead, according to the pool report. In the video, a Marine was seen noticing that one of the men appeared to be breathing.

A Marine approached one of the men in the mosque saying, "He's [expletive] faking he's dead. He's faking he's [expletive] dead."

The Marine raised his rifle and fired into the apparently wounded man's head, at which point a companion said, "Well, he's dead now."

When told by the pool reporter that the men were among those wounded in Friday's firefight, the Marine who fired the shot said, "I didn't know, sir. I didn't know."

The Marines said they are investigating why the wounded Iraqis were left behind for 24 hours and whether the man was killed illegally. Navy investigators said they believe they have located the fifth Iraqi -- the only one not wounded a second time -- who said he wanted to provide information about the killing.

Before the Marines entered the mosque Saturday, a lieutenant from one of two squads involved in the fighting was told that there were people inside.

"Did you shoot them?" he asked.

"Roger that, sir," one of the men replied.

"Were they armed?" the lieutenant asked. The other Marine shrugged.

Part Two:

The 33-year-old Associated Press photographer stayed behind to capture insider images during the siege of the former insurgent stronghold.

"Everyone in Fallujah knew it was coming. I had been taking pictures for days," he said. "I thought I could go on doing it."

In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous artillery shelling turned Hussein's northern Jolan neighborhood into a zone of rubble and death. The walls of his house were pockmarked by coalition fire.

"Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out," he said.

"There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days."

By Tuesday afternoon, as U.S. forces and Iraqi rebels engaged in fierce clashes in the heart of his neighborhood, Hussein snapped.

"U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house," he said.

Hussein said he panicked, seizing on a plan to escape across the Euphrates River, which flows on the western side of the city

"I wasn't really thinking," he said. "Suddenly, I just had to get out. I didn't think there was any other choice."

In the rush, Hussein left behind his camera lens and a satellite telephone for transmitting his images. His lens, marked with the distinctive AP logo, was discovered two days later by U.S. Marines next to a dead man's body in a house in Jolan.

AP colleagues in the Baghdad bureau, who by then had not heard from Hussein in 48 hours, became even more worried.

Hussein moved from house to house — dodging gunfire — and reached the river.

"I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

"I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards."

He met a peasant family, who gave him refuge in their house for two days. Hussein knew a driver in the region and sent a message to another AP colleague, Ali Ahmed, in nearby Ramadi.

Ahmed relayed the news that Hussein was alive to AP's Baghdad bureau. He sent a second message back to Hussein that a fisherman in nearby Habaniyah would ferry the photographer to safety by boat.

Part Three:

WASHINGTON - Human rights experts said Friday that American soldiers might have committed a war crime on Thursday when they sent fleeing Iraqi civilians back into Fallujah.

Citing several articles of the Geneva Conventions, the experts said recognized laws of war require military forces to protect civilians as refugees and forbid returning them to a combat zone.

"This is highly problematical conduct in terms of exposing people to grave danger by returning them to an area where fighting is going on," said Jordan Paust, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former Army prosecutor.

James Ross, senior legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, said, "If that's what happened, it would be a war crime."

A stream of refugees, about 300 men, women and children, were detained by American soldiers as they left southern Fallujah by car and on foot. The women and children were allowed to proceed. The men were tested for any residues left by the handling of explosives. All tested negative, but they were sent back.

The military says keeping men ages 15 to 55 from leaving is key to the mission's success.

"If they're not carrying a weapon, you can't tell" who is an insurgent trying to slip away and who isn't, said an officer with the Army's 1st Calvary Division.

Because the United States has refused to take part in the International Criminal Court, it is unclear whether American troops could be held accountable, even if their actions in handling those fleeing were determined to be criminal.

They say the last election was decided on Values. And so it was. First they went to church on Sunday and spit in Christ's face. Then they went to the voting booth on Tuesday, and spit in America's face. Values.

I have a modest proposal for that Flag Burning Amendment the republicans keep trying to get passed. Here it is: that committing a war crime while wearing the flag will amount to its desecration, just as if it had actually been burned. If you commit a war crime while wearing the flag, you are also guilty of the crime of desecrating the flag. If the republicans want to argue that this would unduly restrain our military from effectively fighting the enemy, I would simply suggest that if our military commanders still want their men to commit war crimes, all they would have to do is first order their men to remove the flags from their uniforms. They could leave the words United States Of America on them if they want. Just remove the flag. They could then go on about their business as planned.

Values. Respect for our flag. Heh. Just see if they'll pass that one...

Wait...Wait...We're Not Homosexuals...!

Apparently heterosexual voters in Utah hadn't considered the consequences to themselves...

Salt Lake City attorney Mary Corporon recently filed a motion contending that Amendment 3 makes it unconstitutional to enforce a court protective order against her client that his former live-in girlfriend obtained from a judge. Corporon's client was charged with violating the order that was to keep him away from the girlfriend and the apartment they formerly shared. "If you have two people who occupy the same space together, a man and a woman in a romantic relationship, and the court steps in and says, 'One of you gets to occupy the space you have, and the other doesn't, that begins to look like a marriage breaking up and the temporary protective orders issued in divorces," Corporon said.

Attorney Monte Stewart, cochairman of Utahns for a Better Tomorrow, which supported the amendment, said such arguments ultimately will fail. "Lawyers representing clients, especially in criminal cases, are obligated to throw up just about everything and anything they can think of," Stewart said. "That's just the nature of the system. As they throw these arguments up, one by one they will be rejected."

However, former Utah supreme court chief justice Michael Zimmerman said it is no surprise that Amendment 3 would be invoked in cases having nothing to do with same-sex marriage, and he expects more lawyers will test such theories. "Wholly apart from the civil rights issue, the troubling part is that second section," said Zimmerman, who opposed the amendment. "Never underestimate the creativity of lawyers as they look for ways to use it in situations where it wasn't anticipated.... Who knows the number of ways it could crop up."

The Advocate - Utah's new gay marriage ban cited in nongay case

Charming. Now there is no such thing as domestic violence between unmarried heterosexual couples, because there is no "domestic" allowed unless you're married.

Not that the religious right has anything against wife beating anyway...

Saturday November 13, 2004

Pure Fiction

Via John Aravosis, via MyDD.Com, a little fact checking on Charles Krauthammer. Recall that in disputing that the anti-gay marriage referendum in Ohio had anything to do with Bush's win there, Krauthammer argued thusly:

Bush increased his vote in 2004 over 2000 by an average of 3.1 percent nationwide. In Ohio the increase was 1 percent -- less than a third of the national average. In the 11 states in which the gay marriage referendums were held, Bush increased his vote by less than he did in the 39 states that did not have the referendum. The great anti-gay surge was pure fiction.

Actually...Bush's increase was...

Ohio Turnout for Bush

2000: 2,351,209
2004: 2,796,147

Krauthammer is tossing around claims of "nonsense" while he is making a blatant fabrication upon which he builds a counter-thesis to the facts. Bush increased his vote total by 19% from 2000 to 2004 in Ohio.

What Krauthammer probably means, was the percentage of the vote increased by only 1 percent. But that still leaves the inconvenient facts that 1) religious conservatives came out in droves who hadn't in 2000, and who probably wouldn't have if not for the anti-gay ballot question, and 2) the republicans did everything in their power to make sure they hate vote came out, and part of their strategy was to put those amendments on the ballots in the battleground states.

It worked. Anti-gay hate re-elected George Bush. But it has done more then that. It has branded the republican party. If it wasn't the Hate Party before, it sure as hell is now. The republican party cannot win elections, without the hate vote. It is officially now, the party of the American gutter.

For My Next Film, I'm Going To Do A Biography Of Oscar Wilde And His Buddy Lord Alfred Douglas. They'll Exchange Friendship Rings...

Some films would be too radical, even for Oliver Stone to make...

Daily Gossip reports: "Oliver Stone's movie Alexander has been screened for press, and while there are some emotional moments between Colin Farrell (pictured), who plays a weirdly blond Alexander, and Jared Leto, who plays the conqueror's bizarrely tressed companion, Hephaestion, there is no sex between them. The emotional content is mostly about eyes brimming with tears, especially when Leto presents Farrell with a friendship ring and concedes that Farrell must marry a woman."

Queer Day - The truth is out: Alexander isn't gay at all

Heterosexual film makers, no matter how progressive, who are not comfortable dealing honestly with same sex love, should not be making films about same sex lovers. That seems like such an obvious thing, yet time and again we get these directorial super stars taking on gay material they have no respect for, other then as a badge of their progressiveness. They get into the material, they freak, and instead of honesty, our stories, our history gets shoved in the closet.

But only its dignity and beauty. The unsavory parts are fair game, even to exaggerate if not fabricate outright. This is the same Oliver Stone after all, who made so much of the role of the "gay underground" in the conspiracy to kill JFK. Yeah...that Oliver Stone. We can be Kennedy killers. We just can't be lovers.

Shopping For Blue...

Weekend art supply shopping. I go down to my friendly local Baltimore gay neighborhood, where there are two excellent art supply stores, and one fairly decent one associated with the nearby Maryland College Of The Arts. I want another pad of Bristol Board, another roll of layout paper, another roll of frisket paper, and some more charcoal sticks of various hardnesses. Oh...and some workable fixative. I reach for a can of Krylon Workable Fixative, and then pause...

Where the hell is this stuff made..?

I turn the can around: Cleveland, Ohio. Blue space in a red state...but it just voted to ban not only same sex marriages, but civil unions and any other legal recognition of same sex couples. It's out. But what about the house brand? I'm in the Utrecht store, just down the block from my local Lambda Rising bookstore. The can on the store brand says its made in Cranbury, New Jersey. I check my map. Red space in a blue state. But it can stay, because that state has civil unions. My Strathmore Bristol Board is made in Massachusetts, so it stays, even if it is made in a red part of that state. The charcoal is from England and Germany and Mexico.

I know...I know...it all sounds terribly complicated for a simple shopping trip. The next four years, and god knows how long after that, are going to be complicated times for gay and lesbian people living in the United States. You only need to go through this exercise once for a given product, and then after that it's either on the blue list or the red and that's that. Now I have a few more things on my list that I can buy without feeding the beast.

Now to go get some groceries...

Friday November 12, 2004

I have mixed feelings about this, mostly because you have to realize that there are a lot of people in the South who hate what the southern Bush voters have done to America. Just look at that blue and red county map again and you can see that the south was not solidly for Bush at all. There is blue there. But if you look at the angry rant in the above link as less against the South, as against those southerners who think they're more genuinely American then the rest of us, then it's brilliant.

All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, it’s a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.

The next dickwad who says, "It’s your money, not the government's money" is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. That’s right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It’s too easy, asshole, they’re blue states. It’s not your money, assholes, it’s fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.

Let’s talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It’s fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that’s right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that’s just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.

But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula. Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes.

Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.

And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.

Bob Jones Doesn't Speak For The Republican Party. Really. No...Really...

Via John Aravosis, this from republican talking head Charles Krauthammer, who says that all this talk of republicans winning on the gay bashing vote is just a bunch of stuff and nonsense:

In the 11 states in which the gay marriage referendums were held, Bush increased his vote by less than he did in the 39 states that did not have the referendum. The great anti-gay surge was pure fiction.

But this is only to say that in those states without an anti same sex marriage amendment on the ballot, Bush may well have lost. Without a doubt it made the difference in Ohio, and without Ohio John Kerry would now be the president elect. So Krauthammer's thesis is false on its face. But since when did a little thing like truth matter to a republican?

Now that Bush has been reelected, there's this...well...this little image problem. What does it say about a political party that they won by actively inciting anti-gay passions in the voters. Well...you could argue that hating gays is a perfectly legitimate moral position to take. But that only wins you the approval of the gutter, and the party suits aspire to more. What then to do? Well, and here's where the true Stalinist stands apart from the rank and file wanna-be, you just say that it never happened...

This does not deter the myth of the Bigoted Christian Redneck from dominating the thinking of liberals and infecting the blue-state media. They need their moral superiority like oxygen, and they cannot have it cut off by mere facts. Once again they angrily claim the moral high ground, while standing in the ruins of yet another humiliating electoral defeat.

You could almost forget that Karl Rove made getting out the religious right vote in 2004 his top priority. It wasn't a fringe group of bigoted rednecks that produced and mailed these out to voters in several states...

...it was the Republican National Committee. They actively courted the homophobe vote, which in turn demanded from Bush, and got, support for an amendment to the constitution of the united states, which literally writes out of the constitution the existence of same sex couples. The republican party actively courted the anti-gay vote this election, and for the very simple reason that without it, Bush simply could not have won. This is the fact that Krauthammer is pleased to call a humiliating defeat. And it is precisely the moral outrage at republican incitement of prejudice towards gay and lesbian Americans, to win an election, that Krauthammer contemptuously ridicules. But from one end of this country to the other, the republican party, and republican candidates for office, used the gay menace to harvest votes they absolutely needed to win:

The Republican Senate candidate in Oklahoma warns of "rampant" lesbianism in some schools in the state in a tape released Monday by his Democratic opponent.

The remark by Republican Tom Coburn drew a skeptical response from state educators.

"I don't believe that," said Keith Ballard, executive director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association. He said the group's attorneys "haven't said anything to me about that."

In the tape released by the campaign of Brad Carson, the Democratic candidate, Coburn says a campaign worker from Coalgate told him that "lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"

The Associated Press - GOP Senate candidate in Oklahoma speaks of 'rampant' lesbianism in schools

That the republicans believed inciting anti-gay prejudice would get them votes is beyond disputing by anyone but, naturally, a republican talking head. It worked. That is also beyond dispute. Now comes the morning after, and people from one end of the nation taking a good look at their republican neighbors for what may seem like the first time. And Krauthammer doesn't like the looks his kind are now getting. But they earned those looks the old fashioned way.

Our moral superiority to the likes of you Charles, doesn't come from any sort of grand striving on the part of most of us, so much as the belly flop you creeps have taken into the sewer. Goodness knows we in the reality based community are a mixed lot with problems of our own. We only look so good compared to you, because you guys have been in a moral free fall for decades now. Let's hear it for the new Attorney General nominee, who told Bush he could legally look the other way while teenage boys in Iraq were raped in front of soldiers wearing uniforms with the words United States Of America stitched on them. He's your man, and the president who wanted that opinion is also your man, and that says all that needs to be said about that open sewer your kind calls a conscience.

Far be it from us Charles, we gay and lesbian Americans who don't hate ourselves just because runts like you do, far be it from all Americans, gay and straight, who believe in liberty and justice for all, who think that torture is evil, and especially so when done in the name of the United States and freedom, that waging war on a false pretext is vile when done by a totalitarian regime, and utterly depraved when done not only by a democracy, but by the bearer of the torch of liberty, far be it from we who think that a decent society is one that takes care of its elderly, educates its children and feeds its poor, far be it from us to rub our moral superiority in your face. Especially since you creeps have been wiping your face in your own bullshit for decades now. If it wasn't clear before November 2 that our moral superiority is precisely why your kind hates us, it became crystal clear afterwards. But so what? The sight of decency and goodness makes you sick to your stomach, and the only thing we could possible do to make you like us any better, swim in your moral sewer, would make us hate ourselves. So there we are. You don't like our attitude? Fuck you.

There are humiliating defeats and then there are humiliating victories. The squealing sound we are now hearing from Krauthammer is the sound of the slightly less then brain dead side of the republican party getting their heads around how to deal with the fact that November 2, 2004 was a victory, the stench of which their party will never live down, and which the United States of America may well be generations living down. But that's what happens to sluts. We didn't make you jump into bed with bigots Charles. You decided that winning elections was more important then actually being the upright patriotic decent moral citizens you keep babbling you are. Fine. You sleep with pigs, and people take notice of what that says about you. So much, so obvious. The morning after regret soon passes, a new election approaches, and you'll sleep with those bigoted rednecks again Charles, because the nice boys and girls won't have you anymore, and those bigots are the only fuck you've got.

[Edited a tad for clarity]

Thursday November 11, 2004

Bastards!

Fucking Gutter Crawling, Shit Eating Bastards!

(New York City) ABC news is preparing an investigative report that claims Matthew Shepard may not have been the victim of a hate crime, but rather a robbery that went terribly wrong.

The report is scheduled to air on 20/20 on Nov. 26. The network has not provided advance copies to the media.

...

Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are serving double life sentences for the killing.

In statements to police and in plea bargains to avoid the death penalty both men admitted murdering Shepard and said they had targeted him because he was gay.

...

In a press release promoting the program 20/20 says that it will present "surprising revelations, including Laramie's underground world of methamphetamine use that may have contributed to the crime and whether or not Shepard knew his killers."

The ABC promotion says that their first interviews since they were convicted, McKinney and Henderson now claim Shepard's sexuality had nothing to do with the crime.

...

Michael Adams, the education director at Lambda Legal called promotion "disturbing"

"There is simply no way to 'de-gay' the murder of Matthew Shepard, Adams told 365Gay.com

"There were the statements of the murders at the time and the defense even argued 'gay panic' claiming that Shepard had come onto them."

...

But ABC defends the program.

"The murder of Matthew Shepard was and is a heinous and viscous crime," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider told the Post.

"Exploring and re-examining the facts around that murder in a very thoughtful and in-depth way is the very essence of responsible journalism. This new information in no way diminishes the importance of the national conversation that took place after Matthew Shepard's murder."

365Gay.Com - ABC Investigation Claims Matthew Shepard May Not Have Been Hate Crime Victim

This new information in no way diminishes the importance of the national conversation that took place after Matthew Shepard's murder. Right. Just the importance of anti-gay hate in that murder. The kid's killers even tried on a gay panic defense for christ's sake, and here comes ABC to say that his homosexuality had nothing to do with it.

McKinney's lawyer, Dion Custis, told jurors in his closings that his client was in an "emotional rage" when he beat Shepard. He stressed that McKinney is not a murderer and urged the jury to consider why the beating occurred.

"[McKinney] is not a cold-blooded murderer, ladies and gentlemen; he reacted," Custis said. "There was no thought process ... He hit him [Shepard] too many times. The question is why."

Custis stressed that McKinney was reacting to an unwanted alleged sexual advance by Shepard. Shepard, the defense claims, grabbed McKinney's crotch, sparking his own fatal beating. However, Custis would have wanted to further explore the alleged reasons for McKinney's violent reaction to Shepard's alleged advances, but he could not. On Monday, Judge Barton Voigt barred McKinney's defense from presenting a so-called "gay panic defense.

Court TV - Jury in Shepard murder trial enters second day of deliberations

It's like saying antisemitism had nothing to do with why millions of jews were gassed by the Nazis. They were the victims of a national lice eradication program gone horribly wrong...

Hey everybody...homophobia isn't killing homosexuals after all! Now let's all look the other way like good Americans... ABC is grinding another lit cigarette into the body of that dead kid, and laughing at every other victim of anti gay violence in America, possibly for nothing more then ratings, although an interest with the anti-gay right in trivializing homophobia sure can't be ruled out either. John Stossel and Chris Vlasto both have a track record of giving America the middle finger on behalf of the right wing gutter.

Either the executives at ABC figure their own kids are immune to the threat of anti-gay violence, or they don't give a good goddamn any more about their own kids safety, then they do about anyone else's. This is just the kind of wink and a nod to bigots that this nation needs right after a national election that saw some of the most vicious anti-gay political rhetoric ever. What ABC is doing here is trying to insure that the threat to innocent people is in no way diminished for the foreseeable future. Whether they are doing it from shear greed, or contempt, makes utterly no difference. ABC is pissing on the grave of a dead gay kid, and telling the bigots of America that it's okay.

This, without a doubt, is going to get more gay people killed. ABC of course, will probably turn those murders into 20-20 episodes.

Picking My Brain...Part II

Pick this:

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The media tells us that you have received the largest number of popular votes of any president in America's history. Congratulations!

In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.

Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.

Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years—a brief time only—to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God.

Christ said, “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my father honour” (John 12:26).

The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you—that you would do right and honor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

Best wishes.

Sincerely your friend,

Bob Jones III
President
PS: A few moments ago I read this letter to the students in Chapel. They applauded loudly their approval.

When I told them that Tom Daschle was no longer the minority leader of the Senate, they cheered again.

On occasion, Christians have not agreed with things you said during your first term. Nonetheless, we could not be more thankful that God has given you four more years to serve Him in the White House, never taking off your Christian faith and laying it aside as a man takes off a jacket, but living, speaking, and making decisions as one who knows the Bible to be eternally true.

© 2004 Bob Jones Universitywebsite

Pick this:

H. J. RES. 56 Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

May 21, 2003 Mrs. MUSGRAVE (for herself, Mr. HALL, Mr. MCINTYRE, Mr. PETERSON of Minnesota, Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS of Virginia, and Mr. VITTER) introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTION Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

"Article --

"SECTION 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

Tanks On The Streets Of America...

Well...that didn't take long...

Helpful Tips...

[GEEK ALERT] via rec.humor.funny.jokes...from the Aero-News.net article which mentions the Google graphic of SpaceShipOne:

(Aero-News advice: On a PC, right click and select "save as..." to save the image. On a Mac, option-click and choose "save image..." and if you are running Linux you don't need any advice)

Wednesday November 10, 2004

What It Will Take To Win Them Over

Digby has another good post up about winning over the "heartland" and why it won't work:

The fundamental problem is that the super Christians won't compromise on principle and the rest of these "values voters" are hypocrites. Nobody bought the v-chip in red state America or anywhere else. They don't want to take responsibility for what comes into their TV's, they want to hector people for "forcing" them to watch these horrible things while they pass the popcorn. These same people listen to Rush refer to Abu Ghraib as "blowing off steam" and think that Bill O'Reilly is a salt of the earth regular guy despite his little obsession with porn stars. There's your heartland values for you and they look surprisingly like the values you see on your television set. That's because they are.

"Heartland values" is just another world for tribal identity. And this division is about crying Uncle.

Here's a passage from Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Union (thanks CRL) in 1860. Tell me if this doesn't strike a chord:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

So what else is new? We are dealing with an absolutist culture that demands total capitulation or nothing. Compromise will not work and it certainly will not work on these "values" issues. (Indeed, I think it's part of what makes us look weak to some other factions who might be willing to vote for us.) This is the same old shit over and over and over again. We backed off on the death penalty, gun control, welfare, affirmative action and here we are with a new slate of issues about gays. Tomorrow it will be creationism. Until we realize that their condition is that we FULLY EMBRACE their cultural dominance in both word and deed, they will not be satisfied.

It is not enough that they be left alone to do what they choose. We must join them and do it thoroughly and with fervor. No amount of tweaking will work. Their real beef is psychological and tribal. Issues are fungible.

That's it exactly. For about a decade I argued with them on Usenet, in alt.politics.homosexuality. One of their repetitive arguments was that liberal morals were "relativistic" while their morals were superior by virtue of being aligned with tradition (pick one) or the biblical word of god (pick one). In any extended argument with these people over whether a set of moral values whose legitimacy was solely determined by picking some absolute authority figure could be said not to also be completely relativistic (relative that is, to which absolute authority you choose to submit to) their argument suddenly became very simple: okay...somebody's moral values must win, and the only question is...whose?

They were saying to me in all seriousness, that it doesn't matter whether moral values and judgments are correct, or what moral standards actually help or hurt us. It doesn't matter ultimately whether or not a particular set of moral beliefs actually work. What matters is whose moral values rule. Theirs or ours ("ours" being any set of moral standards and values that aren't theirs). Over and over again what I heard from them was, "Somebody's morals have to win."

So much for the immorality of relativism. Their's is a concept of morality completely at odds with any sort of democratic values. Democracy takes as it's working hypothesis, that freedom of conscience is a good thing. They believe exactly the opposite. They believe freedom of conscience is immoral. A rule of law in a democracy is different from the rule of tyrants in totalitarian states in exactly this: that there is, must be, room for individual conscience in a democracy. Democracy cannot exist, without freedom of conscience. Their Let's Spread Democracy To The Rest Of The World rhetoric notwithstanding, the right does not believe in democracy.

The concretes, as Digby says, are fungible. One moment it's gun control, the next its women's rights. One moment its social security, the next its sex on TV. None of it is important. What's important is do we ask how high, when they say jump. If we don't, we're persecuting them.

How do you fight against something like this? Well, actually it's very simple: you live your own life, on your own terms, and not theirs. It seems to be the one thing they can't stand...even if they are in complete control. They demand not just obedience, but acquiescence. And not only those, but respect. It is not enough that you obey massa, you must love him too. Every moment you don't give it to them, you defeat them.

No. Not Anymore You Don't...

He calls me at work. We've known each other for years. He got me my first major contract as a software developer back in the early 1990s. Conservative, but not fundamentalist. To the right on most things, but with a disdain for religious right puritanism that I once took seriously. If only it was more principled, then simply do what you damn well please with everyone else, but leave me alone... Until this moment we've always been able to paper over our political differences.

Hello Bruce...blah blah blah...busy with my new contract...blah blah blah...working on some stuff here at home...blah blah blah...busy as all hell at work...blah blah blah...doing some Linux installs...blah blah blah...you run SuSE Linux at home, right?...blah blah blah...maybe I could pick your brain about SuSE sometime...blah blah blah...you off work tomorrow?

Busy eh? Actually, I might be busy too. You hear we had an election recently?

Oh yeah...blah blah blah......blah blah blah...

I'm getting my passport.

(Laughs) Well...the only reason I couldn't vote for Kerry was...blah blah blah...blah blah blah...blah blah blah blah...

You see the those pamphlets the Republican National Committee mailed out to several states, saying that the democrats were going to establish same sex marriage and ban the bible?

Why no, I didn't see those.

Right. Well, just because you have a fire escape plan doesn't mean you expect to have a fire. But I think gay and lesbian Americans need to start working on their escape plan now, and if you think that's funny, Be Glad You Can.

End of conversation. Pick my brain eh?

Pick this:

Pick this:

Pick this:

The news media have grossly misreported the contents of state referendum questions targeting Americans who are apparently seen as more dangerous to national security than John Kerry -- gay people.

Using unthinking shorthand that carries out the hidden agendas of the people who want gays banished to the fringes of society, the press has over and over again referred to these measures as banning gay marriage. In fact that is only accurate regarding three of the 11 initiatives passed last week.

In state after state -- most prominently in Ohio (which Bush barely won) and in Michigan (which he nearly did) -- these referendums went far beyond the question of who gets to be formally married. They also banned legal and other conventions incidental to marriage, which are central to the evolving institutions of civil unions and domestic partnerships.

Thomas Oliphant - The Boston Globe

Pick this:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 — President Bush said today he supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, declaring that such a measure was the only way to protect the status of marriage between man and woman, which he called "the most fundamental institution of civilization."

In an announcement fraught with social, legal and political implications, Mr. Bush urged Congress to act on the amendment quickly and send it on to the state legislatures. Quick action is essential, he said, to bring clarity to the law and protect husband-and-wife marriages from a few "activist judges."

"The voice of the people must be heard," Mr. Bush said in a brief White House speech that Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, called an attempt to find "a wedge issue to divide the American people."

The New York Times - Bush Backs Ban in Constitution on Gay Marriage

Pick this:

Top White House strategist Karl Rove said Sunday that there's no doubt President Bush will use his second term to win support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Asked if Bush intends to "go ahead and push" for the gay marriage amendment, Rove told "Fox News Sunday's" Chris Wallace: "Absolutely."

"If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal," the top Bush adviser explained. "And the ideal is that marriage ought to be and should be a union of a man and a woman." "We cannot allow activist judges to overturn that," he insisted. "We cannot allow activist local elected officials to thumb their nose at 5,000 years of human history and determine that marriage is something else."

The Liberty Press - Rove: Bush Will 'Absolutely' Push Gay Marriage Ban

Pick this:

In Oklahoma, Sam is being evicted from his ranch. He is 60 and faces life without Earl, his partner of 22 years. They built the ranch together and raised Sam’s three sons. When Earl died, he left the ranch to Sam in his will, but a legal technicality – having only two signatures and not three—allowed one of Earl’s cousins to challenge the will and evict Sam.

Gay City News - On Location in America

Pick this:

Evangelist Jerry Falwell is organizing battle plans for what he calls an "evangelical revolution."

The televangelist Tuesday said that last week's election shows that Americans want to return to "traditional values".

"We all, for the first time, began to realize the potential of religious conservatives, particularly evangelicals, when something over 30 million of them went to the polls," he said in announcing the new organization.

The Lynchburg, Virginia-based Falwell said the 'army' would be a "21st century resurrection of the Moral Majority," the organization he founded in 1979.

Called the Faith and Values Coalition, Falwell said that it would lobby for conservatives to fill openings on the Supreme Court and lower courts and would push for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and the election of another "George Bush-type" conservative in 2008.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court allowing gay marriages "helped energize our people," Falwell told the Associated Press.

365Gay.Com - Falwell Plans Army To Battle Gays

Pick this:

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA: A state judge Tuesday imposed a partial gag order on lawyers and officials involved in the capital murder case of three people charged in the killing of a gay teenager.

Scotty Joe Weaver was murdered in his trailer home last month. (story) His body was then carted to a quiet dirt road where his killers set it on fire and then casually drove off, after robbing him of between $65 and $80. A man driving an all-terrain vehicle discovered Weaver's severely burned and decomposed body.

...

Robert Porter, 18, Christopher Ryan Gaines, 20, and Gaines' girlfriend, Nichole Kelsay, 18, are charged with murder. Authorities have said the Weaver's sexuality was believed to be a factor in the deadly assault.

...

Rusty Pigott, who represents Gaines, has said that Gaines did not kill Weaver and that Porter "spoke openly of wanting to kill the guy because he was gay."

365Gay.Com - Judge Places Partial Gag Rule On Gay Murder Trial

Pick this:

Pick this:

Pick this:

Pick this:

Pick this:

Pick is about the right word, isn't it? Put the knife in my back, smile in my face and ask me for some answers to some stuff. There was a time when I thought that anyone who asks you a question should get both an answer and your respect; not only because they want to learn something new, but also because of the profound moral value that is the freedom of knowledge and information. We both grow a little, and the human race grows a little, when I share with you the knowledge I have. But that is Bruce from another time, in another age that seems now, so long, long ago. The person asking you a question may not so much be a fellow traveler down the road of life, willing to learn something new from it, as a cheat who has made a point of going though life looking over someone else's shoulders for the answers to the test. Sorry son, but it's time for you to stand on your own now.

The server you are trying to connect to (bruce) is behind a firewall. Systems outside of its local network, are not permitted to use its resources.

Tuesday November , 2004

Secession

Via Steve Gilliard, via Daily Kos, a bit of adorable wing nut babbling:

What is it with conservatives and their neverending rage? They control everything, yet they remain angry, angry, angry. Was it Jon Stewart who called it the "anger of the enfranchised"?

This winger, for instance, wants the US to expel the Blue States:

Yet, there are 38 states today that may be inclined to adopt, let us call it, a "Declaration of Expulsion," that is, a specific constitutional amendment to kick out the systemically troublesome states and those trending rapidly toward anti-American, if not outright subversive, behavior. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Only the remaining 38 states would retain the name, "United States of America." The 12 expelled mobs could call themselves the "Dirty Dozen," or individually keep their identity and go their separate ways, probably straight to Hell.

I'm not sure why Oregon and Washington survive the cataclysm, or Minnesota. And does this joker actually believe they'd get to keep Hawaii?

Kos was quoting there, from an article in Human Events a publication of the loony right. The article by Mike Thompson, titled, Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal begins in the usual We Can't Get No Respect vein:

For many decades, conservative citizens and like-minded political leaders (starting with President Calvin Coolidge) have been denigrated by the vilest of lies and characterizations from hordes of liberals who now won't even admit that they are liberals--because the word connotes such moral stink and political silliness. As a class, liberals no longer are merely the vigorous opponents of the Right; they are spiteful enemies of civilization's core decency and traditions.

Traditions like war mongering, thievery, corruption, lynching, fag bashing, and misogyny...for instance.

My initial reaction to his list of states to expel was, and I'm not kidding, Yay...Maryland Made The List! We're not called the Free State for nothing. But it wouldn't be that simple. First of all, as I and other bloggers have been pointing out here, the red states feed off the blue, in terms of tax dollars (and probably in terms of all the other economic measurements too, but I've yet to see conclusive numbers on that). Right wing babblers like Thompson, and his knuckle dragging readership would probably love to see us go, but their political leaders will know better. What?? Take Away Our Pork??? At minimum, they would probably demand alimony.

California, suffering the economic pain it is, for all of that is still something like the 7th largest economy, in the world. The Confederate States of America still, almost 140 years after the civil war, can't pay their own bills. And they're going to expel the part that pays them? I don't think so.

Secondly, a lot of blue states have significant red counties, and vice-versa. Tempting as it is, you can't neatly divide the country by states. Central California is not the California coast, and central Maryland is not the eastern shore.

If you still think it's a good idea, ponder this; what do you think happens to the people in the little blue enclaves of a new Confederacy? Here...let me give you a hint:

I think Kos is right though. Considering that this guy wants to expel eight of the original thirteen colonies, we should keep the name "United States Of America".

Steve Gilliard posts something from a reader who is all for secession though:

Let them have what they want. Let them have the totalitarian theocratic feudal system they want so much. See how long they last. No FDA: good luck with that aspirin. Enjoy your hamburger! No CDC, no OSHA, no EPA. No labor laws, no minimum wage, no right to sue the corporation that put the mercury in their medicine and arsenic in their water and whose machinery ripped their arm off. No right to declare bankruptcy. Let them wallow in their hatred of us and when they need us and all our works, they can just go pray to Jesus.

As Joe Conason writes,

Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people...

If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights -- you can thank liberals. If your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable -- you can thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your family -- you can thank liberals. If our rivers are getting cleaner and our air isn't black with pollution; if our wilderness is protected and our countryside is still green -- you can thank liberals. If people of all races can share the same public facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couples fall in love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to transcend a segregated society -- you can thank liberals. Progressive innovations like those and so many others were achieved by long, difficult struggles against entrenched power. What defined conservatism, and conservatives, was their opposition to every one of those advances.

It's ours--we fought and died for it. They don't want it; they never did. So fuck them. Walk away.

Listen: in Tao, absence is a strong as presence. I am not advocating hatred. I am not saying to fight them, or be mean to them. I am saying, stop trying to give them something they don't want. It isn't working. When you fight, your energy feeds what you're fighting against. When you resist, your resistance props it up. When you hate, you become what you hate.

And when you keep reaching out your hand in loving kindness to someone who hates your fucking guts and wants you dead, you're an idiot.

So stop it.

Stop enabling them.

Go read the rest of it. It's a pure howl of anger...but it's pretty much what I've been working up to here. We need to stop supporting people who despise us. We need to stop enabling them.

Come...Let Us Reason Together... On Second Thought...

Some people on the left...Ralph Nader and his (rapidly shrinking group of) supporters for example...believe that in order for things to get better politically in America, they have to get worse. That is, the people voting republican, have to really feel the pain of republican policies before they'll wake up and smell the coffee. But it is they who need to wake up and smell the coffee:

A plethora of End-Time preachers, tracts, films, and websites hawk environmental cataclysm as Good News -- a harbinger of the imminent Second Coming. Hal Lindsey's 1970 End-Time "non-fiction" work, The Late Great Planet Earth, is the classic of the genre; the movie version pummels viewers with stock footage of nuclear blasts, polluting smokestacks, raging floods, and killer bees. Likewise, dispensationalist author Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" novels -- at one point selling 1.5 million copies per month -- weave ecological disaster into an action-adventure account of prophesy.

At RaptureReady.com, the "Rapture Index" tracks all the latest news in relation to biblical prophecy. Among its leading environmental indicators of Apocalypse are oil supply and price, famine, drought, plagues, wild weather, floods, and climate. RaptureReady webmaster Todd Strandberg writes to explain why climate change made the list: "I used to think there was no real need for Christians to monitor the changes related to greenhouse gases. If it was going to take a couple hundred years for things to get serious, I assumed the nearness of the End Times would overshadow this problem. With the speed of climate change now seen as moving much faster, global warming could very well be a major factor in the plagues of the tribulation."

Grist Magazine - The Godly Must Be Crazy

What we're dealing with here, when we're dealing with the religious right and fundamentalism, are people who think that the worse things get, the better it is...because that means Armageddon is coming, And That's A Good Thing. They see their world collapsing around them, and they'll think it's the second coming on its way. Their lives become a ruin of poverty and disease and they'll see that as proof that god's kingdom is at hand.

Let it be said, and said often, that there are Christians who are horrified by this attitude. It is a peculiarly American delusion of Christianity that has much of the rest of the world, particularly Europe, mystified and appalled. This is not feed the hungry and clothe the poor Christianity, it is Let The World Rot And Good Riddance Christianity. It is not, love your neighbor, forgive your enemies and strive for peace between foes Christianity, but We Can't Wait To See Everyone We Hate Burning In Eternal Fire Christianity. There is no Christ in American fundamentalism. Ironically, for all their hatred of elitism, American fundamentalism is itself a kind of elitism. We are the ones God loves...and you're not...

Appealing to the common good, and making this world a better place then you found it with this crowd is just going to get you a blank stare at best, if it doesn't get you an earful of vilification. Only satan's agents want to make this world a better place. God's chosen understand that things are supposed to get worse. So how do we get them off our backs?

The social contract used to be that in exchange for our own freedom of conscience in spiritual values, we respected our neighbor's. We didn't have to share their religious beliefs, so long as we all shared a common belief in government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We lived in a state of mutual cooperation in our every day to day affairs, even if we didn't share the same religious beliefs. That contract is in tatters now, as the religious right demands that America become a government of the fundamentalists, by the fundamentalists, and for the fundamentalists. Fine. No more cooperation. No more courtesies. No more extended hand in fellowship. You say we are evil? Fine. Let us not trouble you anymore with our thoughts. May you live unfettered by a single shred of help from the reality based community, in your separate reality. From now on, you can face it by yourselves.

Of course, this will just make them feel even more vindicated, but that's fine. They don't need to see the light...we do. We need to see that by helping them avoid reality, we're enabling them, and ultimately their attacks on everything we hold dear. We need, like someone with an addict in the family, to stop enabling them. We in the reality based community, by virtue of our courage in dealing with and understanding reality, have been enabling the fundamentalists for generations, to cheat it. But for trained biologists, people practicing a discipline of knowledge they condemn as satanic, many of them wouldn't even be alive now. Yet they hate us. Fine. We don't have do, we should not, hate them in return, because generating hate within us is just another way they have of sucking the joy of life out of us. But we should stop enabling them. The social contract is dead, until the day they decide they want to live by it again. Until that day, let them live in the separate reality they've woven for themselves, by themselves.

Need directions? Sorry, I'm evil. You don't want evil giving you directions do you? Maybe you should just pray for directions instead of asking me. Want to know what time it is? I'm sorry, but I'm evil. You wouldn't trust evil to give you the correct time of day would you? Ask god to tell you what time it is.

Discriminating against you for your religious beliefs now am I? Why...no. Not at all. I'm evil. You've said so yourself. You don't want to be troubled by evil any more do you? Okay. I'm not troubling you any more. Now go make yourself a nice warm glass of Get The Fuck Out Of My Face.

Monday November 8, 2004

The War On Gay Americans...(continued)

Thomas Oliphant in today's Boston Globe has a good column about the anti-gay marriage amendments voters passed in eleven states last tuesday. He rightly points out that in all but three of those votes, the voters were not merely voting to ban same sex marriage, but to strip same sex couples from any and all legal recognition:

THE NEWS media have grossly misreported the contents of state referendum questions targeting Americans who are apparently seen as more dangerous to national security than John Kerry -- gay people.

Using unthinking shorthand that carries out the hidden agendas of the people who want gays banished to the fringes of society, the press has over and over again referred to these measures as banning gay marriage. In fact that is only accurate regarding three of the 11 initiatives passed last week.

In state after state -- most prominently in Ohio (which Bush barely won) and in Michigan (which he nearly did) -- these referendums went far beyond the question of who gets to be formally married. They also banned legal and other conventions incidental to marriage, which are central to the evolving institutions of civil unions and domestic partnerships.

He goes on to note the essential deception in those votes, and the press's casual indifference to them:

For political reasons, it was central to the hidden agendas of the groups pushing these restrictions (the target is homosexuality, not relationships between homosexuals) that they not become the focus of the debate.

Therefore marriage was used as the cover for the far more consequential effort to strip contractual rights from gay couples who have formed hundreds of thousands of families in recent years across the United States.

That is why proponents described them repeatedly as efforts to ban gay or same-sex marriage, a formulation the press has mindlessly repeated. It reminds me of the success of groups who spent nearly a decade on behalf of banning a rare pregnancy procedure, the name for which was invented solely for political and shock-value purposes -- partial-birth abortion. Again, the press's lazy penchant for a catch phrase, unexamined for accuracy, led reporters and editors to mindlessly repeat the phrase.

Unforgivably, the press didn't care, and essentially looked the other way while an American minority had one of the most basic of human rights stripped away. But also, many of our neighbors, friends and family members, also looked the other way. We were there. They could have asked us what was at stake. Some did and still did not care. Others couldn't be bothered. It is unforgivable.

We Resent You, Because Resentment Is The Only Value We've Ever Had

Damn good post up on Digby's Blog. He starts with this big dose of claptrap from one of the literary world's claptrap kings, Tom Wolfe:

I think support for Bush is about not wanting to be led by East-coast pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment. Support for Bush is about resentment in the so-called 'red states' — a confusing term to Guardian readers, I agree — which here means, literally, middle America.

To which Digby responds, in part:

I'm not going to take a stand against "heartland values" or "southern culture" whatever it's defined as this week. It seems to me that it would be worthless, because this battle is obviously tribal, not specific to any particular issue. Slavery and Jim Crow are long gone. Now it's religion and gays. The lines are drawn as they've always been and there will be no reconciliation through politics. Even a bloody civil war couldn't do that.

History suggests that the southern culture has always been as defined by it's resentment toward the rest of the country as much as anything else. The so-called bi-coastal liberal elites certainly don't think of themselves as having a lot in common with each other, other than being Americans. People from Los Angeles and Vermont call themselves Californians and New Englanders, respectively. I don't think they believe they share a "culture." People in Seattle call themselves pacific northwesterners. People in New York call themselves New Yorkers --- Chicagoans midwesterners. They identify themselves by their specific region and a broader identity as Americans, not by this alleged Bi-coastal cultural alliance. This notion of two easily identifiable cultures is only held by the people who used to call themselves the confederacy and now call themselves "the heartland." That alone should be reason to stop and question what is really going on here.

Well, it's also a notion held by a few eastern establishment jackasses like Wolfe and David Brooks...but...Exactly. Go read the whole thing, because Digby dips into some history there that is truely illuminating. For instance, from a speech given at the centennial of the civil war by historian Stephen Z. Starr:

...it is tragic to think that for two generations, the mental energies of the South were devoted to elaborating justifications of slavery - perhaps to appease its own feelings of guilt - to the exclusion of every other form of cultural activity.

[...]

The second basic issue between the sections lay in the area of politics; necessarily so, for it was in the political arena that the problems between the sections were fought out until the South decided that political solutions, reached by a process of give and take, were no longer adequate to protect its "honor and self-respect."

Bear in mind that middle and upper class Southerners were politicians by birthright. Active participation in politics was, in the South, a way of life. One would expect, therefore, to find a much greater degree of political skill and acumen there than in the North. What one finds there instead is demagogy, bombast, irresponsibility, incompetence, a childish refusal to come to grips with realities, and a habitual substitution of slogans, symbols and bogeymen for facts. These are strong statements, but hardly strong enough to fit the situation.

The South had an almost unbroken control of the Federal Government from 1789 until secession. The presidents were either Southerners., or Northerners like Pierce and Buchanan, who were mere puppets in the hands of Southern senators and cabinet members. For seventy years, the Supreme Court had a majority of Southern justices. With the aid of its Northern allies and the three-fifths rule, the South controlled one or both houses of Congress. The fifteen Slave States, with a white population of not quite eight million, had 30 senators, 90 representatives, and 120 electoral votes, whereas the State of New York, with a population of four million had two senators, 33 representatives, and 35 electoral votes. Even the election of 1860 left the South in control of both houses of Congress, and until at least 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been powerless to pass legislation hostile to the South, and through its control of the Senate, the South could have blocked the confirmation of every Lincoln appointee whom it considered unfriendly. In spite of this, and notwithstanding Lincoln's repeated assurances that he would not, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery where it already existed, the South chose to secede.

So the South was in almost complete control when Lincoln was elected, yet it still chose secession. And you get the sense that even complete control wouldn't have been enough. They would have still felt persecuted by the rest of the country.

Values

Fundamentalist radio host Frank Pastore, shouts triumphantly for Bush and the rise of fundamentalism, in the L.A. Times:

Christians, in politics as in evangelism, are not against people or the world. But we are against false ideas that hold good people captive. On Tuesday, this nation rejected liberalism, primarily because liberalism has been taken captive by the left. Since 1968, the left has taken millions captive, and we must help those Democrats who truly want to be free to actually break free of this evil ideology.

Evil? Evil? Here's what they were saying on the Free Republic web site, about Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer (via The Peking Duck):

Could explain her dimentia in talking about the Cheney's daughter. Prayers..

Elizabutt has breast cancer

If I were a doctor, I'd be frightened to treat the wife of a guy who sues doctors for a living.

a pity for sure, but good luck finding a doctor to treat the wife of the most vicious medical malpractice attorney in the nation...what goes around comes around I guess.

she could always go to canada or cuber to get the very best treatment possible.

I want her well, but NOT treated here.

any doctor here who treats her should have his head examined.

It's also a shame because, if it wasn't for her bottom-feeding trial lawyer husband, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies probably would have found a cure for breast cancer by now...

would you bet YOUR house, your kids college on Edwards wife?

Send her to cuber. Libs say their system is better than ours.

....revenge is mine sayeth the LORD!!!!!!!!!

God is not mocked, you reap what you sow. I'm sorry folks but we all have to learn that you cannot go around spewing hatred and leave the door wide open to satan.

sometimes boobs have problems....

"God dont like ugly" (behavior)

This is the republican grass roots talking. You could argue that they would know what evil looks like, because they see it every day in the bathroom mirror. And they voted for Bush, because he is one of them.

From Joshua Marshall, we learn that the republican leadership is claiming somewhat more then a simple bare majority for Bush, on the basis of a little handly spinning of the numbers:

I keep returning again and again to this issue of the comical overstatement of the Republican victory last Tuesday. But let me just hit at least once on two of the silliest talking points of those pushing this argument.

First is the argument, voiced by Mr Cheney and others, that President won with more popular votes than any president in history. A truly silly point. Yes, the president got more popular votes than any other candidate in history. He is followed by John Kerry. And Kerry is followed by Ronald Reagan and Al Gore, in that order.

The fact that the president got more popular votes than anybody in the past isn't a measure of the margin of his victory. It's a measure of population growth, which (unless he's more of a bounder than we know) he is not responsible for, and a high-turnout election, for which his unpopularity is as responsible as his popularity...

False ideas anyone? More popular votes then anybody in the past... This is an argument that is deceitful on its face, and if anyone knows why, it's the very same people making it. If anyone has an agenda of false ideas in America these days, it's the republicans and the fundamentalists.

Values. The more our enemies speak of them, the more you can see they don't have any. They have merely appropriated the language of people who do. That would be the rest of us. So they speak our language, but there is no more meaning behind it, other then the knife held firmly in one hand, where you just catch a glimpse of it every now and then, right before they swing it at you.

Nineteen, And In Iraq

This post from a nineteen year old soldier in Iraq, by way of The Peking Duck:

If you voted for Bush, didn't vote, or voted no on gay marriage, I hope you get drafted. I hope they stick you in my unit, and you go with me to Iraq when my unit goes back in September. I will laugh when you see what soldiers in that country face on a daily basis. I hope you work with gay soldiers too. I did. One of them saved my life. Think he shouldn't have the right to get married? Fuck you. He fought just as hard as I did and on most days, did his job better than me. Don't tell me gays don't have the same rights you do. Think the war in Iraq is a good thing? I'll donate my M-16 to you and you can go in my place.

Something to hold in your mind, for the next time you read about some pentagon assault on the rights and dignity of gay and lesbians in the ranks. Don't assume that the person in uniform you meet has the same knuckle-dragging anti-gay prejudices the pentagon chiefs do.

The Americano

This one from H.L. Mencken is bitterly making the rounds in the blogs of the reality based community. Mencken, let it be said, despised Roosevelt and the New Deal democrats. Yet, he knew what the fifty-one percent who voted for the gutter last Tuesday look like too:

He likes money and knows how to amass property, but his cultural development is but little above that of the domestic animals. He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his morality and his self-interest are crudely identical...He is a violent nationalist and patriot, but he admires rogues in office and always beats the tax-collector if he can. He has immovable opinions about all the great affairs of state, but nine-tenths of them are sheer imbecilities. He is violently jealous of what he conceives to be his rights, but brutally disregardful of the other fellow's...Thus man, whether city or country bred, is the normal Americano - the 100 percent...He exists in all countries, but here alone he rules...

Sound familiar? I did a little searching and found other good bits and pieces from what I think is this Mencken essay. When I have time I'll try to locate which one it is:

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

The American, in other words, thinks that the sinner has no rights that any one is bound to respect, and he is prone to mistake an unsupported charge of sinning, provided it be made violently enough, for actual proof and confession.

The very essence of Americanism is the doctrine that the other fellow, if he happens to be in a minority, has absolutely no rights - that enough is done for him when he is allowed to live at all.

It remains impossible...to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mysterious merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude, in the man at the bottom of the scale - that inferiority, by some strange magic, becomes a kind of superiority...

Theoretically, the American people should be happier than any other; actually, they are probably the least happy in Christendom. The trouble with them is that they do not trust one another - and without mutual trust there can be no ease, and no genuine happiness. What avails it for a man to have money in the bank and a Ford in his garage if he knows that his neighbors on both sides are watching him through knotholes, and that the pastor of the tabernacle down the road is planning to have him sent to jail? The thing that makes life charming is not money, but the society of our fellow men, and the thing that draws us to our fellow men is not admiration for their inner virtues, their hard striving to live according to the light that is in them, but admiration for their outer graces and decencies - in brief, confidence that they will always act generously and understandingly in their intercourse with us. We must trust them before we may enjoy them. Manifestly, it is impossible to put any such trust in a Puritan. With the best intentions in the world he cannot rid himself of the delusion that his duty to save us from our sins...

Sunday November 7, 2004

Freedom

From gay poet Langston Hughes, via Silent Lucidity :

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Saturday November 6, 2004

Those Wacky Tax And Spend Southern Conservatives...

Daniel Gross has a column up on Slate, that gets to the roots of that phenomena I noted earlier, about red state tax leaching of blue states...

In decades past, increasing Republican dominance of the House and Senate would have meant more fiscal discipline. But Republicans increasingly dominate the states that are net drains on Federal taxesŃthe Southern and Great Plains statesŃwhile fading in the coastal states that produce a disproportionate share of federal revenue. (It's Republicans, not Democrats, who are sucking on the federal teat.) What Amity Shlaes quaintly identified in today's Financial Times as the "southern culture of tax cutting" has been married to the southern culture of failing to generate wealth and the southern culture of depending on federal largesse. The offspring is an unsightly deficit monster.

But one, let it be said, highly agreeable to the southern republicans. Self righteousness is always easier when someone else is paying your bills.

What Is A Friend?

This article in the Advocate by Jim David is a good short summary of my feelings right now, toward the friends in my life who voted for Bush last Tuesday:

"Moral values" won. Values that Bush promotes and that do not include us. My relationship of 17 years has no value whatsoever to these people. It has value to my friends, even the friends who voted for Bush. But in the name of lower taxes or terrorism or better cat food or whatever, they still voted against me. So maybe they don't value me that much after all.

It comes into focus more clearly, when you read Jim's article in combination with this one, from Rod Abid:

Back in the mid and late '90s I was assigned to work in Bosnia and Kosovo, where I learned several things.

(1) The Bosnians and Kosovars who didn't leave and were there for the war wished they'd paid attention to the many signs of their nation falling off the precipice. They didn't imagine that the cultural differences in their nation would result in an all-out war.

(2) The people who didn't leave couldn't imagine that things could turn so bad so quickly.

(3) The people who didn't leave knew that the Serbs could hate them, but didn't imagine that the hatred would come to them in the form of their neighbors turning them over to homicidal paramilitary groups

These people saw signs of a clearly gathering threat. But they didn't, or couldn't, get out in time.

I learned that when the center doesn't hold things can get ugly very quickly...

Read this one, and ask yourself how a friend could even think of putting you in that kind of danger. There is no mistaking the hate coming from the Bush power base toward gay and lesbian people. And there is no denying what that hate is trying now, and looks absolutely poised to do. Federal. Marriage. Amendment. They want to write us literally out of the constitution. That kind of thing has always been the prelude for mass murder. Maybe it seems like a wildly remote possibility now. Maybe that's just how it seemed to all the dead in Bosnia and Kosovo. If you have a straight friend, and the FMA