Saturday October 9, 2004

Furious George

Saturday October 2, 2004

Shrill

I need to set aside some time to update my blog links. In the meantime, try Shrillblog, which Brad DeLong, among others, posts to. It's a fun day-to-day account of the growing roll call of the shrill; shrillness being an trait the kook pews attributed early on to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who just happens to be very articulate and incisive in his columns on the Bush gang's corruption. Shrillness is not just for Paul Krugman anymore. Thankfully, others have are now taking up the nasty task of writing clearly and honestly about President Daddy's Little Fuckup.

And speaking of shrill:

A Solid Win for Kerry

The East German judges at National Review are awarding points to Kerry:

The Corner on National Review Online: FAIR'S FAIR [Andrew Stuttaford] Kerry is right that nuclear proliferation is the most serious threat to the US (and he’s right, incidentally, about the bunker busters). He’s also right that the administration has not done enough about this threat.

If that's what you think, Andrew--biggest threat, Bush hasn't done enough--then why aren't you out there working for Kerry?

The East German judges... Wow. That's pretty shrill.

Friday October 1, 2004

Advertising It

The Gay Financial Network is reporting that the CommercialCloset, a website that tracks how business uses images of gay and lesbian people in advertising, has had to go off line after being overwhelmed by traffic from religious right sites. The hits began when organizers of a boycott of Proctor and Gamble products found a four year old P&G ad targeting the gay community on the site. It is a probable, that the site was not merely experiencing heavy traffic due from a link at the boycott organizer's site, but that it was the victim of a Denial Of Service attack:

On Tuesday, the group's Web campaign against P&G included a link to the Commercial Closet site, condemning a four-year-old print ad for Downy Wrinkle Release, produced by P&G for the magazine Xtra, which has a gay and lesbian readership.

"A company doesn't create and run an ad that leaves the impression that homosexual sex is thrilling and exciting unless they support the homosexual agenda," read AFA's article on the group's Web site Wednesday.

The ad for Downy Wrinkle Release features wrinkled clothes tossed on the floor in front of a bed; in the background the blurry images of two men sitting on the bed can be seen, with the caption: "You were more concerned with taking them off than folding them up."

According to the AFA Web site, the ad created by P&G "leaves the impression that homosexual sex is normal, thrilling and exciting."

Mike Wilke, founder of the Commercial Closet Web site, which features 85 years of gay images in advertising worldwide, said the site began getting flooded with hundreds of emails Tuesday night quoting bible passages and others that said gays will "die in hell."

By midday Wednesday, the site was forced to shut down, after it began receiving more than 20 hits a second.

This is not the first time that the religious right has attacked Proctor and Gamble. In the 1980s and 90s, The American kook pews were easily suckered into boycotting P&G products by a rumor campaign, likely started by business rivals, to the effect that the P&G corporate logo was a satanic symbol. Next thing the company knew, they were getting deluged with calls from christian conservatives, for a boycott of their products. To this day, some of them believe that the company president appeared, either on the Phil Donnahue show (in some accounts it was the Sally Jesse Raphael show) and swore allegiance to satan.

Dobson may not be seeing the number 666 in the beard of the man in the moon on P&G's logo now, but the sight of a fortune 500 company opposing anti-gay discrimination in its own backyard was bound to get the same reaction from him. Dobson, who himself shook hands with satan long ago, when he decided to make a career out of rousing violent religious passions toward same sex lovers, knows he cannot allow large American corporations to treat gay and lesbian Americans as if they were just another market. Homosexuals are to Dobson, as Jews were to Himmler, and any company that crafts images of homosexuals as ordinary people, even if it is just to market products to them, is intolerable, because it undercuts his ability to make demons out of them.

But religious hatred acknowledges no master. From John Aravosis' AMERICABlog, comes news that a billboard off a Virginia highway, for the religious right ex-gay group P-FOX, was defaced recently. Here's what their press release has to say about it:

The vandalism of our billboard is another example of the intolerance ex-gays often face. We pray for those who tried to suppress our message, and we are as determined as ever to support the right of self-determination for those who seek help for unwanted same sex attractions.

We see from this attack, and numerous hateful emails we have received from gay activists, that our message is clear, but unsettling...

There is an unsettling aspect to this billboard all right, but not the one they're spinning. Here is a closer look at the damage

It sure looks like a paintball gun attack. What's telling, is that it is only the figure of the young man and the area immediately around him that is hit. Not the message, not the P-FOX logo or name. They were shooting at the guy. The guy identified in the billboard as an ex gay. That distinction, 'ex', is lost on the violent homophobe. Look at those blood red paintball hits again. The target was the guy, not the message.

Anti-gay hatred, stirred up by the religious right, is so intense now in Virginia, that the statehouse there was able to pass a sweeping law, that by some accounts takes away from same sex couples the ability to so much as hold a joint checking account together. Legal experts have called it a "jaw dropping" attack on gay and lesbian citizens, and it passed with a veto proof majority in the statehouse of the state where Pat Robertson called down hurricanes and terrorist attacks on Orlando Florida, when it dared to allow rainbow flags to fly one Pride day, the state where Jerry Falwell, who once stood beside Anita Bryant and declared that "a homosexual will kill you, as soon as look at you." preaches that gay people are trying to destroy America.

Advertising. You can be certain, that the chilling irony of all those blood red paintball gun hits on one of their ex gay posterboys won't give the parents of P-FOX a moment's pause. Yes...that could be my son riddled with bullet holes...but I'd rather he was dead then homosexual anyway... That billboard was not vandalized, it's subtext was made clear by the messages's real audience: that young male age group who is most responsible for violent attacks against homosexuals.

There must be no homosexuals...

Wednesday September 29, 2004

Sweet Land Of Torture

By way of Brad DeLong, I see that A. Michael Froomkin gives us the fundamental reason that moral, patriotic Americans cannot vote republican in this, or any election in the foreseeable future. Simply put, the party is utterly indistinguishable from the blood thirsty tyrants and despots it has always claimed to be defending America against:

Discourse.net: Voting Republican This Year = Voting for Torture: It’s not enough that Rumsfeld and probably Bush not just tacitly condoned but actively encouraged studies of optimal torture regimes, creating a climate in which undeniable and disgusting torture was used against Iraqi civilians, including children. And at Guantanamo (more). Even they at least had the hypocrisy to attempt to do the Iraq torture planning under wraps. (Hypocrisy being “the tribute vice pays to virtue”.) Meanwhile, at home, being too delicate to torture domestically, the Administration quietly subcontracted the job to Syria. (See my post almost exactly a year ago, Maher Arar Affair: What is the Pluperfect of ‘Cynic’?.)

Comes now a group of Congressional Republicans who are pure vice, and are not even trying to hide it: they have proposed that US law be amended to remove protections against torture — ie to legitimate torture, to plan to torture — for people we label “terrorists” (modern unpersons). The full horrid details are at Obsidian Wings: Legalizing Torture. The key move would be to exclude “terrorists” from the protection of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The “terrorists” could be held in secret unless they could somehow overcome (without lawyers or witnesses?) a presumption of guilt. When they failed to overcome this impossible burden they could be subject to “extraordinary rendition” which is bureaucrat for “being ported or transferred to a country that may engage in torture”—a deportation that currently would be a serious violation of US law.

Anyone who votes for people capable of supporting these policies has blood on their hands. Not to mention what they are doing to the image of the US as the ‘City on the Hill’, the beacon to mankind. Once we descend into the torture pit, we’re just arguing about circles in Hell.

Monday September 27, 2004

The Heart Of The Moral Crusade: Karl Rove

In this day and age of cell phones, email and blogs, orhestrating such a thing as a whisper campaign seems anachronistic. But then, we're dealing with a bunch of witch burners here.

Joshua Marshall has a piece up you should read, about one of Karl Rove's little whisper campaigns in Alabama. This, you may recall, is the same Karl Rove who started a whisper campaign in South Carolina, that John McCain's adopted Indian daughter was actually his child by a black mistress. Of course you know it didn't start with John McCain in South Carolina:

An article out this week in The Atlantic Monthly focuses specifically on a series of races Rove ran in Texas and Alabama in the 1990s.

The Alabama races in particular haven't gotten that much national press attention in the past. And one of the most lizardly passages in the article describes how Rove launched a whispering campaign against one Democratic opponent suggesting that the candidate -- a sitting Alabama state Supreme Court Justice, who had long worked on child welfare issues -- was in fact a pedophile ...

When his term on the court ended, he chose not to run for re-election. I later learned another reason why. Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children. In the early 1980s he had helped to start the Children's Trust Fund of Alabama, and he later established the Corporate Foundation for Children, a private, nonprofit organization. At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove's signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.

Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."

Rove works for Bush. There is no way in hell Bush doesn't know the kind of in the gutter campaign Rove wages. They're birds of a feather.

What Rove does is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Remember this the next time you see a commerical for a republican candidate, emphasizing their own family, and by way of that, their concern for the welfare of families. The republican machine goes after the families of their opponants, deliberately, as a kind of political blackmail, to get them to quit the race or watch their families suffer. Republicans regard the families of their enemies as soft targets. This is how republicans win races. It is also how they govern.

Family Values.

Thursday September 23, 2004

A Brief Glance Into The Pit

Novelist E.L. Doctorow takes a look, and sees the man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

...

He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.

Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.

A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.

And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

...

The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.

There is more to this of course. There is the large percentage of Americans who look at this president and see him as one of their own. He is their champion, their embodiment, the perpetual failure, who grabbed the handles of power, and smirking, puts his thumbs into the eyes of his betters.

Sunday September 19, 2004

Postcard From The Fight For Marriage...

As I gave my paralyzed life partner, Phil Anderson, a urinary tract flush on a recent Monday night, his catheter failed. Following two unsuccessful attempts to replace the catheter and a phone call to an emergency room nurse at the Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee, we were able to correct his problem on the third try. I got to bed at 1 a.m. and was up at 4 a.m.

The following Wednesday night after I returned to our Kenosha home from making a work-related presentation at a courthouse in Waukegan, Ill., Phil had a temperature of 105 degrees. I slept on a couch so I could get up and put cold compresses on his head. He sleeps in a hospital bed in our sunroom because he has no access to the two bedrooms on our second floor. I had about two hours of sleep that night.

So, when I read columns and letters about gays wanting to get married so rice can be thrown at the ceremony and that loving couples like us are a threat to the "sanctity of marriage," I get angry...

What threat to marriage? - The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

I'll bet he does. Go read the rest of it. It reminds me of a moment during the Sharon Kowalski/Karen Thompson crisis years ago. Kowalski, for those of you unfamiliar with the story, was severely injured in an automobile accident, brain damaged and in need of constant care, and her parents fought a nearly decade long fight to keep her and her lover, Thompson, apart. At one point during the fight, Kowalski's father was quoted as asking, pathetically, what Thompson wanted with his daughter now, "she's in diapers." To the Orson Scott Cards of the world, the love between same sex couples can only be a cheap imitation of the real thing. Gay couples just play house, and nothing more. When evidence of the reality of our feelings stand right in front of them, they flounder for some excuse, any excuse, that will explain it away, so they don't have to see it, so they don't have to see the humanity within us.

Bill Hetland is now taking care of his disabled life partner Phil Anderson, from the same basic attachment of love that kept him by Anderson's side before he was disabled; because when you're in love, your lover's well being, their happiness, is all that matters, because their needs are your needs, because when they hurt, you hurt, because when they smile, you smile. It's not sacrifice. They are the reason life is sweet. They are your proof, that life is good. Love. You do what you must, so long as it means you are still together. Our relationships will always seem unreal to others, as long as they insist on believing that homosexuals don't love, they just have sex.

God Being Easy To Fool Like That...

Still ruminating on Jimmy Swaggart's sermon the other day. It is such a naked expression of the rotten to the core morals of the religious right that it's hard not to keep looking at it.

I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died.

"I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died." Swaggart opens his trench coat and gives the world a peek at the naked man underneath. And it is not a God fearing man of righteousness you see in the moment before looking away, but a squalid evil little runt, who would kill another man for finding beauty in him, who shakes his fist at God for creating a world where men love, and are loved by men. I'll do it...and lie to God about it afterward..." Oh you will, will you...?

"Where is Able thy brother?"
"I cannot tell, am I my brother's keeper?"

It's worth noting that his audience applauded after he said it. If it shocked anyone there in that moment, I couldn't tell watching the video. These are people who are comfortable with the idea of looking God in the face and lying through their teeth. And they insist that they know more about living a moral life then the rest of us.

Saturday September 18, 2004

It's Not About Hate...Oh What The Hell...Yes It Is...

Quickly Now...now many times have you heard a spokes droid for the religious right say that they don't hate homosexuals, that their vitriolic opposition to anything that even looks like gay rights is really based on their compassion for homosexuals? How many times? Too many to count? Me too. Surprised by the following?

CRTC, station receive complaint over comments by Sunday morning evangelist

An Ottawa viewer's complaint about "outrageous" comments on homosexuality by U.S. evangelist Jimmy Swaggart has sparked an apology by the television station, and a complaint to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Vance Strickland wrote to Omni 1, a multicultural station based in Toronto, and to the CRTC after stumbling across the show on Sunday. According to a transcript of the program, Mr. Swaggart said: "I'm trying to find the correct name for it ... this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. ... I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died." Sandy Zwyer, Omni 1's spokesperson, said Mr. Swaggart's remarks were "a serious breach" of regulations, and the station manager is reviewing the tape of the program.

The National Post (Canada)

Me either.

Meanwhile...

Talk to the people in rural Pine Grove, Ala., who knew Scotty Joe Weaver and they’ll tell you one thing: The 18-year-old seemed to survive anything life threw at him.

At age 10 he fought off cancer through two grueling years of chemotherapy. At 15 he lost his father. Throughout his high school years in the nearby town of Bay Minette, he weathered the taunts and teases of classmates for being gay. “He always knew how to get through,” remembers his friend Justin Toth, who is also gay. “He had fun even at the worst times in his life.”

This time, however, Weaver did not survive.

He was brutally killed outside Pine Grove, his southern Alabama hometown of less than 1,000 people near the Florida panhandle. Some officials are speculating that it was a hate crime.

On July 22 a man driving an all-terrain vehicle discovered a burned body in a remote field about eight miles from Weaver’s trailer home. The autopsy showed Weaver had been beaten, strangled, stabbed multiple times, doused with gasoline, and set afire. Investigators believe the teen was tied to a chair and killed in his home. “It took a very long and painful time for him to die,” says Baldwin County district attorney David Whetstone, who believes the injuries didn’t all happen at once and that the severity of the wounds suggests Weaver was killed because he was gay.

One of the suspects charged in the case was Weaver’s best friend since the first grade—18-year-old Nichole Bryars Kelsay. Also charged with capital murder are Christopher Ryan Gaines, 20, and Robert Holly Lofton Porter, 18. As the three sit in jail awaiting their trial, the town is struggling to understand how the life of such a tenacious teen could end so horribly...

Scotty's last moments - The Advocate

How could it happen? How could it not. When religious leaders incite religious passions toward minority groups, this is exactly what happens. This is exactly what is supposed to happen. When you have religious leaders telling people...no...screaming at them, that the "gay agenda" is a bigger threat to the United States then Al Qaeda, what they are doing is inciting violence. When they wave Leviticus at gay and lesbian Americans, they are telling their followers that god wants homosexuals killed, and don't worry, the bible says their blood is on them, not you.

How could it happen? In a nation where freedom of religion is a basic principle, and decent people just sit passively in the pews while the figure behind the pulpit screams at them to hate their neighbor, hate them with every fiber in their body, in the name of Christ, or else god will destroy their country, and they just continue to sit there even though they are free in this country to get up, get out, and find another church where the message is to love your neighbor, not hate them in the name of Christ then murder is not hard to understand at all. Murder, is what is being called for from the pulpits of America on Sundays, and every other day of the week. Murder has been the sermon in America for years. And for years the rest of the country has been trying to ignore it, doing its best not to look at the hate coming in waves from the pulpits. And for years it has been killing gay and lesbian Americans.

We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such. These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.
-James Carroll, "Constantine's Sword"

"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is a piece of doggerel that is long past the point of being even plausible self deception. It has been buried in the wave upon wave of anti-gay rhetoric coming from the religious right this presidential campaign. Anyone who excuses their hate mongering now, as being nothing other then expressions of deeply held religious beliefs, as opposed to the exhortations to murder they are, and have always been, have no right to call themselves moral men or women. They are indifferent to anti-gay hate, and the religious leaders who incite it. And that indifference is what allows hate to become murder.

According To Our Polling, Bush Won The Popular Vote In 2000 By Six Percentage Points

The reason Bush seems to have such a strong lead in the major polls like Gallup's these days turns out to be a simple one: They're oversampling republians.

The Gallup Poll, despite its reputation, assumes that this November 40% of those turning out to vote will be Republicans, and only 33% will be Democrat. You read that correctly. I asked Gallup, who have been very courteous to my requests, to send me this morning their sample breakdowns by party identification for both their likely and registered voter samples they use in these national and I suspect their state polls. This is what I got back this morning:

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs - Poll of September 13-15
Reflected Bush Winning by 55%-42%

Total Sample: 767
GOP: 305 (40%)
Dem: 253 (33%)
Ind: 208 (28%)

Registered Voter Sample Party IDs - Same Poll
Reflected Bush Winning by 52%-44%

Total Sample: 1022
GOP: 381 (38%)
Dem: 336 (33%)
Ind: 298 (30%)

In both polls, Gallup oversamples greatly for the GOP, and undersamples for the Democrats. Worse yet, Gallup just confirmed for me that this is the same sampling methodology they have been using this whole election season, for all their national and state polls. Gallup says that "This (the breakdown between Reeps and Dems) was not a constant. It can differ slightly between surveys" in response to my latest email. Slightly? Does that mean that in all of these national and state polls we have seen from Gallup that they have "slightly" varied between 36%-40% GOP and 32%-36% Democrat? I already know from an email I got from Gallup earlier in the week that in their suspicious Wisconsin and Minnesota polls they seemingly oversampled for the GOP and undersampled for the Dems. For example in Wisconsin, in which they show Bush now with a healthy lead, Gallup used a sample comprised of 38% GOP and 32% Democratic likely voters. In Minnesota where Gallup shows Bush gaining a small lead, their sample reflects a composition of 36% GOP and 34% Democrat likely voters. How realistic is either breakdown in those states on Election Day?

By Steve Soto, The Left Coaster

Gallup's CEO, surprise, surprise, is a GOP donor. Lying and cheating, are family values.

Tuesday September 14, 2004

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

A gay man has been barred from entering the Hawaii State Library for one year, after a security guard saw him reading www.gayhawaii.com.

He was told that gayhawaii.com was a pornographic site. When a local gay rights organization took up the matter, they were told by a library official that the guard issued the warning because the Web site contained photos of shirtless men.

Saturday September 11, 2004

What Steve Said

I shouldn't have taken my laptop along. But no...I have to go check on the path of hurricane Ivan, and then I check in with Atrios and see that he thinks the right has succeeded in destroying the Bush memo's credibility. He quotes Digby.

Steve Gilliard isn't having any of it. I agree with Steve. The Wurlitzer is actually blowing this one.

And one other thing: I can't see how today's 9-11 remembrances are helping Bush any. People see the images from then replayed on TV...and what's happened since then? Al-Quida is still making threats, and if the connection to what happened at that Russian school just a few days ago is true, still killing hundreds of innocent people. The Taliban has retaken a third of Afghanistan. Osama is still out there. Somewhere. One of his henchmen just released another threat the other day.

When I arrived here on the Navajo reservation the other day, I picked up a copy of the Navajo Times, and learned that a young Navajo Marine, Lance Cpl. Quinn A. Keith, was killed the other day in Iraq. The headline made him the third Navajo killed in Iraq. After 9-11 Bush had the whole world behind him, for the fight against the terrorists, and instead of taking on the enemy he uses all that good will, all the lives lost on 9-11, and all the lost lives to come, to go and settle an old Bush family score, make a few of his neo-conservative pals happy, and himself and some of his other pals rich. I don't know if Atrios and Digby are right about the Bush gang never having to answer for their crimes, but I know we should all work toward that day no matter what, or for sure it will never come.

Now. I am going back into the desert and I am not coming out again for a couple of days. I swear to god I am not turning this laptop back on again tomorrow.

Kayenta Break Time

I'm in my favorite little town in the southwest, Kayenta, and I'm taking a break from posting for a few days. I came out here to rest and recover from all the layoff stress at work, and just life in general. Out here, just minutes away from Monument Valley, I'm going to try to slow down to desert time, relax, and unwind. This place is beautiful, everywhere you turn around to look it is beautiful, every little road you take a drive down it is beautiful. The weather here has been producing bright puffy little clouds that is painting slow moving shadows all over the rock formations, and if you take the time to watch you see them change right before your eyes. What seemed a flat wall of rock actually has a small group of chimney-like columns, stretching out from the main formation. What seemed a smooth round bread dough like formation actually has bends and twists in it. As the shadows move across the land new things are always coming out of it.

And it's quiet out here. When you get out of town a few minutes, only the occasional passing car, which you can hear coming for miles, disturbs the silence. In the far distance you might here a horse neigh, or some small critter chirp, or if you're wandering close to one of the big rock formations, an eagle call. Otherwise, you are walking in a silence the likes of which you will never hear on the east coast. You can hear yourself breathing it is so quiet.

I suppose it would drive some people nuts. But it relaxes me like nothing else seems to. ...in the desert, you can remember your name... Work, though I love it, has been stressful. Politics these days is enormously stressful. The relentless ugliness of the opposition to gay and lesbian civil rights, can make you forget what that decent life you're still fighting for looks like. Without a doubt when I get back to my life back east, I'm going to be glad of having had this time to get as far away from all of that as humanly possible, look a million year old rock formation in the face, and remember a thing or two about what being a human being means.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to watch the sun rise over Monument Valley and turn fifty-one. Talk with you after that.

Thursday September 9, 2004

Internet...? What's That...?

Last night I stayed in Torrey, Utah. Today I'm in Kanab. At least here I have a lousy dial up connection (which can't seem to do better then 24k). In Torrey I could use dial-up, if I was willing to spend 13 dollars a minute just to use my 800 number connection.

I've got stuff to post...but at the moment it doesn't look like I'll be doing much posting. Hell...I can't even download my mail with the connection I've got. It keeps timing out.

Hopefully I'll have something better in Kayenta tomorrow. I'll be staying there through the weekend, and I'll fill you in then.

Tuesday September 7, 2004

Searching For The Fading Tracks Of Other Travelers

Traveling though southern Kansas via state highway 400 wasn't as fast as taking I-70 but it was rewarding in its own way. I got to see a lot of the wide open plains, where once upon a time the first wagon trains rolled west. I drove though lots of small villages and towns, most of which seemed huddled around the big grain elevators that you can see for miles across the nearly flat landscape. It wasn't barren. In fact, there were a lot more trees then I'd expected. Further north, west of Salina, the trees become very sparse, and the land mostly open prairie. That didn't happen on 400 until past Dodge City, and even then it wasn't as empty as much of the drive west on I-70.

I wanted to visit Dodge City this trip, to see a little of the history of the west. Last trip I visited Tombstone and while it is mostly a tourist attraction now, it still has many of the original buildings standing. You could stand in the middle of the main street, which from the old photographs I saw really hasn't changed all that much, and get a feeling of what it must have been like to be standing there in the old west. Dodge is a famous old west city, and all I knew of it was what I'd seen on TV and in the movies. I knew there were distortions in the Hollywood image before I'd visited Tombstone. But actually seeing Tombstone was a revelation. It's in the middle of nowhere. Tombstone was started over a silver strike. There is nothing else nearby to even think of making a living on. No major rivers or streams. Just miles and miles of miles and miles. A small rough scrub grows in patches all around the territory. I hear there were cattlemen there, but I can't figure how they managed it.

So you have to see the old west cities in their context. Dodge was part of the Santa Fe trail, established west of Fort Dodge, after the fort commander decided he didn't want alcohol served on the military reservation. Someone paced out the exact distance away from the fort to be off the reservation (five miles) and opened a bar, and thus Dodge City was born. It became a trade center along the Santa Fe trail, and then a cattle town when the railroad came through. For a time, there was no law in Dodge. It was an open town that became known as the wickedest little city in the west. Though there is a "Boot Hill" in Tombstone, the Dodge claims the original, established where a man was shot and then buried where he fell with his boots on. I think probably they were all called "Boot Hill" in those days.

Approaching Dodge from the east, you pass the cattle pens. Dodge is still a big cattle interest, and I saw meat plants as I drove through bearing names familiar from tainted meat alerts over the years. I drove into town and looked for Front Street, which was the historic main street from the old days. As 400 passed a small railroad yard, I thought I saw it, and pulled off. There was a large parking lot, which I surmised was for tourists. A row of oldish looking buildings faced it. I parked and walked over.

My first hint that something was amiss came largely from the fact that there just wasn't anyone around. It was Labor Day, and there should have been tourists. As I walked along the row of buildings, I noticed a few cheap food joints and a small gift shop, that sold stuff you might expect to see at a convenience store. Nearly everything else was closed. So I walked around the block. On the other side was "Gunsmoke Street". It was empty. A marquee over Dodge Theater said simply "Support Our Downtown". I walked back to what I thought was front street and found a wall with old pictures of Dodge, and some history. The pictures of Front Street I saw looked nothing like where I was standing, and as it turned out, there was a reason for that.

I saw the dreaded words Urban Renewal in the text. Apparently in the 1960s, the city government decided that Front Street was dilapidated and attracting the wrong sort of people to town (imagine that...the wrong sort of people coming to Dodge...) and so with part of the Federal Government urban renewal grant money that was flowing around those days, they decided to level Front Street. The literally turned it into a parking lot. The same lot, as it happened, that they'd set aside for tourists. Swell. Plenty of parking. Nothing to see though.

Well...not nothing exactly. What do you do when you destroyed your city's history? Why, you build a replica. I kid you not. They built a replica of the old Front Street just a block away.

I was appalled and disgusted. I nearly drove off right then but I figured I'd give it a chance. I walked over to the fake Front Street and peeked at it through the fence. It looked nothing like the old pictures I saw on the wall. In fact, it looked more like an Interstate 40 faux old west gift shop row then an actual old west street. I walked into the replica Great Western Hotel, the entrance to the fake Front Street. Inside was the same kind of tourist crap you can buy anywhere along Interstate 40 west of Amarillo.

Time to get out of Dodge...

I drove west. A few miles outside of Dodge I saw a sign, pointing to a place on a nearby hill, where there were wagon ruts from the old Santa Fe trail still visible. I stopped and walked up the hill to them. It was open prairie, and the wind was constant. The prairie undulated slightly. To my south I could see for miles, to my north, the horizon was much closer. There was placards placed near the trail which explained how the ruts were fading, and you had to look closely at the differences in plant growth and subtle changes in the terrain to detect them. The old wagon tracks the placards said, were best seen as the sun went down.

I stood in the prairie wind and tried to imagine what it would be like to cross this land in those times, but I probably can't. I have the space satellite view of earth those first travelers didn't. I can fit what I am looking at on the ground, with satellite images of it I've seen countless times. I have a car that can take me from one side of the country to the other in just a few days. And I have a cell phone, that can let me speak with friends back east at the touch of a few buttons. I came out here to relax.

But I tried. I stood in the prairie wind and looked around and thought it must have felt like crossing the ocean. The land rolls and swells here like a sea, and it seems to go on forever. You take your wagon and you go over the horizon and you leave all your family and friends behind and its just you and the endless space and the wind touching your face, playing with your hair, as it rushes from lonely horizon to the next.

Technical Difficulties

I have no idea what happened last night, but for some reason I could not only upload new pages to my web host, the pages I did try to upload all resulted in just a few lines of HTML that produced nothing but a blank page. This morning I uploaded from a different location and it worked. I suspect that for some reason the hotel ISP was blocking ftp. Only it wasn't really blocking it, just sending crap back to my web host. Strange. At first I thought my web host was experiencing difficulties, but when I checked this morning it was the same, so I tried another location and then I was able to upload my pages. I have no clue as to what was going on. I'd expect a blocked ftp port to just do nothing. But every time I tried to upload last night, the connection seemed to hang, and my web page had this strange HTML on it that wasn't even a fragment of what I'd sent. It was a complete page, but essentially just the HTML and BODY tags on it, both the open and close tags. Strange. I'll have to look into it later.

If it happens again, I'll switch to the 800 number dialup ISP I signed on to and deal with the slow link.

Clear blue sky this morning in Pueblo. I'm heading though the mountains today. Last night when I checked in, the desk clerk said I might see snow along the way. Ack! I might need to buy a sweater.

Monday September 6, 2004

Into Colorado via Route 50

The southern route into Colorado is definitely the more scenic. I'm in Pueblo now, and it's late so I don't have an update. Except I'll tell you what, I'm getting spoiled by all the free high speed internet access I've been getting this trip. Suddenly a lot of motels are offering it. Sometimes it's wireless, sometimes you have to connect via an ethernet cable. But I had free broadband in Terre Haute, in Wichita, I saw it offered at least in one motel in La Junta, and it's here in Pueblo. Nice. I went to a bit of trouble to set up an 800 dial-up internet connection before I left, since that isn't offered by Verizon as part of their DSL service. Now it looks like I'm not going to need it. But I'm not complaining.

If all goes according to plan I'll be stopping early in Grand Junction, and I'll post a more thorough update then.

Sunday September 5, 2004

Alert...

We interrupt this Get Away From It All travelogue to let a little of George Bush's America intrude. But it's important.

A young republican was videotaped during the convention kicking a protestor as she was being held on the ground by three secret service agents. The protestor was arrested, the republican who kicked her was not. A search is on for his identity. If so, reply here.

Followed By A Rainbow.

The drive through the decaying part of St. Louis wasn't as much a shock this trip as it's been in the past, but it's still a gruesome sight. Block after block after block of urban decay...buildings gutted, almost as if by fire, but by neglect instead. Row houses whose roofs have collapsed next to factories and warehouses with blank staring windows, behind which are gutted interiors. They grin back at the highway like bleached skulls in a desert. Last trip I passed a small Safeway grocery store that was still open and doing business. I was amazed to see that there were still people living among the ruins. How could anyone live in that nightmare? Well, if you have no where else to go, you live in a nightmare. This trip, the Safeway was closed.

Several miles west of St. Louis, I passed a large billboard with the banner JOIN THE SONS OF THE CONFEDERACY on it. Above the bold lettering was a narrow strip that read Defend Your Heritage. Below it, another narrow strip that read Visit The Historic Barton Plantation.

The interstate is littered with billboards, some merely ad hoc handmade signs, that warn you to accept Jesus now or burn in hell forever. They don't preach love in these parts, or at any rate, not a healthy love. There are about three times as many billboards advertising adult entertainment of one kind or another..."gentleman's clubs", sex toy emporiums and so forth. I guess that's where you go for love in a place where the churches all preach hate.

Right up to the moment I turned off I-70, I wasn't sure I was going to do the drive to Wichita and Dodge. The drive will be mostly along small state highways and roads and I can not be sure of finding a good spot to bed down for the night, and travel shopping along the interstate has me spoiled rotten. You almost don't have to pack anything if you just drive the interstates. Everything you need you can buy along the way. And if you break down, help is almost always close by. But you can't stop on the interstate and take pictures every time you see a good shot. And I want to see things I haven't seen before.

I was so certain of my path that I didn't bother to look at my Atlas before turning off for Wichita and ended up taking the wrong road. I'd planned on going down 235 from Topeka and instead turned down 435 at Kansas City. I realized my mistake after a few miles, but it lead to the same road Triple-A had designated a scenic route so I stayed on it. I wanted to drive down I-35 from Topeka just to see what kind of road they would call scenic at the edge of the great plains. Now, I find the plains lovely, but most people just think of them as a boring empty flatness. So I was curious.

The landscape starts to suggest the plains some time after Columbia. Prior to that you are in mostly a green rolling hill terrain that is suggestive of the Maryland Piedmonts, but not as lovely. West of Columbia you begin to notice that the land is getting flatter, and the distance to the horizon emptier. On this trip a haze, hanging thickly around the horizon, accompanied me from Indiana almost to Columbia. West of Columbia the sky began to open up and you could tell you were treading at the edge of the big spaces of the west. I was still in it by the time I got to Emporia though, with no sign of the plains in sight. I was beginning to think Triple-A has just designated a stretch of highway scenic, simply because it was a better then average example of this kind of landscape.

Kansas always seems to want to welcome me with a storm of some sort. I was some ways down I-35 and stopped for gas and noticed the big puffy clouds to my west; bright billowing white pile clouds with ominous darknesses lurking beneath. The wind was strong, like it was in 2002 when I brushed paths with two tornadoes. As I drove down the interstate I saw dark shafts of rain hanging off the bottoms of the clouds to my west and southeast, and more ominously, to the west, pale white threads dangling from the cloud bottoms to the ground, that could have been hail shafts. If that was what they were, I thought, that meant the storms were very strong.

I tried scanning the radio for any severe weather reports and found none (if I can find one, I'm going to buy a portable radio that picks up the NOAA weather reports). I scanned the clouds for any sign of rotation or a developing wall could, and didn't see any. I saw no lightning, but there was heavy static on the AM band. But this time it was just rain that hit me.

It was getting late, and I considered stopping at Emporia. When I got there I decided it wasn't inviting enough and kept on driving. The rain I got pummeled with a mile later made me question that decision. It started as a heavy downpour and then became a torrent, blasting the car as if I'd just driven under a waterfall. (Hey...I took off down the road early to avoid hurricane Frances for this reason!) I could vaguely see the SUV in front of me, and kept driving slowly, counting on the torrent to have another side somewhere down the road ahead of me.

The sky grew dark, but not pitch dark. The rain furiously pounded my little car. Then I saw daylight ahead. The sky abruptly cleared. And I was in the plains.

A breathtaking expanse of open space surrounded the highway. My car was zooming over gently rolling treeless hills that flowed from horizon to horizon like a sea of glistening grass. In the distance, dark shafts of rain walked over the hills in front of a sky that was bright and golden. Behind me, the brightest most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen arched in a perfect half circle from one side of the sky to the other. As the interstate rose and dipped over the hills, I saw a lovely landscape full of gentle bends and folds weave around it. There were cattle, and a few lonely windmills dotting the landscape. I crested a small rise and saw some sort of yellow flower covering the plains to my west, as if that part of the rainbow behind me had lightly brushed over the grass.

The rainbow followed me to El Dorado, at times splitting into a double rainbow, then fading away just as I entered the city. I drove on to Wichita. As I unpacked, the remains of the passing storm lit up in brilliant reds and oranges.

Tomorrow, I'll drive to Dodge City, and then follow the Santa Fe trail into Colorado.

Road Dream

Maybe some shrink can figure this one out...

I'm working at the office, but for some reason the Space Telescope Science Institute has spread its offices all across some Kansas plain. My desk is under a tree near the intersection of two small dirt roads. In the distance I can see one of my office mates, James, one of our testers. He is nowhere near talking, or even shouting distance to me. All my other co-workers are scattered, somehow I know this, somewhere over the plains horizon. Luckily, there is email.

James sends me an email, telling me he sees a problem I should come look at. So I walk for an hour or so over to James' desk, which is surrounded by tall stalks of plains wheat. When I get there, and look at his screen, I determine that his network connection is going in and out for some reason. I check the connection to his computer, and it seems fine. His power strip connection runs one way to the horizon, his network cable the other way. I tell him I think the connection at the other end is loose.

I walk off toward the distant flat horizon, following a small twisted pair cable across the plains, certain that when I get to the other end I'll find a loose plug. I follow that damn little cable impatiently across miles and miles of open plains, until I am the only person in sight. At some point before I wake up, I think to myself that the Institute really should go wireless.

Which we have actually. Mostly for the benefit of laptop users.

It's misty and rainy now in Terre Haute. There was some kind of drag strip near my hotel, and the blasting sound of drag racers cold be heard well into the night. Not the greatest location for a hotel I'm thinking. But I brought ear plugs.

Back to the road...

Saturday September 4, 2004

Launch

Out of character, I actually spent a whole two weeks leisurely sorting out my travel needs this year and gathering it together. this morning, I pretty much only had to unplug stuff and pack the car. I was on the road early. It felt good. I had put off this year's road trip because I didn't know whether or not I'd survive the layoffs at the Institute. The theory being that if I got laid off I'd need my accrued vacation time in cash (which is part of their severance package), and if I did survive I'd need the time to decompress afterward. By the time I got on the road this year I was still feeling very stressed. But a few hours travelling toward the great plains went a long way toward sloughing it off.

My plans are to travel off the interstate more this time around, particularly in Kansas and Colorado. I want to see the out of the way towns and vistas, and I especially want to travel down highways where, if I see some good photo possibilities, I can just pull over. You can't do that on the Interstate.

While I was driving down I-70 in Ohio, a mid sized SUV came up behind me, with two young male passengers inside. They looked like a couple of college seniors heading off to some Labor Day weekend getaway. The looked like the sort of young guys you might see any Friday night at your local sports bar. Average to slim builds (at least what I could see of them), short but not close cropped hair, and beautiful, intelligent faces. As they passed my car I recall thinking that they were both very good looking, and that the sight of two very good looking guys travelling alone together, particularly on a holiday weekend always makes you wonder if they're a couple. I remember turning that thought over a few times in my head, thinking that it might possibly be just some sort of bullshit stereotyping I was engaging in. Hell...can't a couple of young straight friends want get just away for a while, and just have each other's company for a couple of days?

Then, a few minutes after it passed me, the SUV started slowing down, and I noticed that the passenger was leaning his head on the driver's shoulder. As I passed the SUV I saw two beautiful young men, clearly and delightedly all kinds of in love with each other. As I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw the passenger plant a kiss on the driver's cheek.

Sweet! What you have to understand is that ours were among about a half dozen cars within eyeshot of each other on that stretch of Interstate. The other drivers and passengers couldn't have missed it. The couple didn't seem to care in the least. A happy couple.

It was a wonderful sight to start a road trip on. I perked up and drove all the way to Terre Haute with a smile and a glowing warm spot inside. I always worry about travelling in red state territory, and Ohio in particular has not been kind lately to its gay and lesbian citizens. Yet here was evidence that even now, even surrounded by all the hostility the religious right and the republican party can generate, things are way, Way different then they were when I was their age. We are a people that will let our love grow in the bright good light of day, like it should for everyone. More of us now then ever realize the honor and the dignity of our love. The closet is no place for it. The closet is no place for our lives to be lived.

Damn...it feels great to be alive...

[Edited slightly]

Friday September 3, 2004

Well...Okay...Three Cartoons...

Jeeze. Something, probably the GOP convention, lit my fire this week. Between packing for my road trip and work I still managed to produce three cartoons. They're up on the cartoon page now.

God knows what the campaign will do to me when I get back. Well...anyway...

Road Trip!

Thursday September 2, 2004

Ack...Two More Cartoons!

Friday Night, before I leave for my road trip. Promise.

Republicans make me sit at my drafting table.

Makeup! Makeup, Dammit!

Atrios has a good picture posted of Zell Miller while he was doing his Pat Buchanan impersonation at the GOP convention. Why is it that these people always have the complexion of zombies looking for brains to eat?

Atrios also had this delicious catch afterward (which is Still on Miller's website):

My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders – and a good friend.

He was once a lieutenant governor – but he didn't stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984.

In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington.

Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so.

John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. Business Week magazine named him one of the top pro-technology legislators and made him a member of its "Digital Dozen."

John was re-elected in 1990 and again in 1996 – when he defeated popular Republican Governor William Weld in the most closely watched Senate race in the country.

John is a graduate of Yale University and was a gunboat officer in the Navy. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three awards of the Purple Heart for combat duty in Vietnam. He later co-founded the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Senator Zell Miller
Introduction of Senator John Kerry
Democratic Party of Georgia's
Jefferson-Jackson Dinner
March 1, 2001

You don't have to take your conscience around behind the barn and shoot it to be a republican. But it'll sure impress the leadership if you do.

Also...Tom Tomorrow is looking for a clip of that young republican who was caught on camera kicking that AIDS protestor on the convention floor. Oh...right...the compassion theme was the day before...

Wednesday September 1, 2004

It Turns Out Genocide Plays Well With The Base

Via Atrios, and War and Peace...The National Review is promoting a book by the spokesman for, indicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic. Under the headline, "What Muslims, multiculturalists, and the media hope you never find out about Islam", National Review is promoting a book by a man who mocked the world's concern over ethnic cleansing, and made excuses for a man who, even as he defended him, was committing genocide against muslims. He is on record as saying that "The Kosovo genocide" is the most outrageous lie of the year, perhaps the decade. It did not happen, period.

A few images from that which did not happen...

Fascists of a feather, flock together. And leopards don't change their spots. Of course they don't think ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. Here's how the National Review defended the virtues of racism once upon a time:

The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes-the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.

National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.

William F. Buckley Jr.
The National Review, 1957.

Tuesday August 31, 2004

Okay...One More Cartoon...

I said this week's cartoon was the last before I took a vacation for September (considering my output for August was all of only two cartoons you can legitimately wonder if this is really a vacation or just more of the same...). But I am going to squeeze in one more before Friday. Just gotta. Yeah...Schrock.

Swift Boat Rebound

Hesiod, back briefly from blogger hiatus, thinks the Swift Boat Smear will rebound against Bush. I sure hope he's right.

I think, ultimately, the Swift Boat ads will backfire on Bush. That's pretty much conventional wisdom at this point. The first polls taken after the controversy erupted showed a slight amount of slippage in support for Kerry, which is not unexpected. Later polls will show a rebound effect for Kerry. But those won't manifest until a week or two after the GOP convention. There is another way in which these ads will rebound on the Bush campaign: It will make John Kerry a sympathetic figure to the millions of anti-Bush voters out there who were waning in their enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee. John Kerry has now entered the ranks of recent Democratic party martyrs, along with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Max Cleland and even Gray Davis. Only the Bush campaign and radical Republicans could make Gray Davis a sympathetic figure. Those who had doubts about Kerry previously, are now enthusiastically supporting him. I predict Democratic voter turnout for this election will be at it's highest levels in decades...

Turnout, in general, had better be. Or we didn't learn our lessons from 2000. You sit out the process of democracy, you Will wake up to find your democracy gone one day. The fanatics Will vote. If decent people can't find the time in their day to vote too, then the fanatics will one day rule them.

The Soul Of The Republican Party

Take a look at it:

They're calling this a swipe and John Kerry's purple heart at the GOP convention, but I don't see John Kerry's name anywhere on this. What I see is a purple heart...on a band-aid.

Of course they weren't thinking about the insult to the medal when they did this. Of course they weren't thinking about the insult to all the wounded soldiers who got the real thing. They could have put something on a band-aid like "John Kerry's Purple Heart", but they didn't. The GOP operative who created this did it from his gut, and every single GOP convention goer who gleefully put one on did it from their gut, utterly without thought that the insult might go way beyond its intended target.

But...then...how much thought did they give to them before they sent them into Iraq? I read somewhere recently, one of the Swift Boat Liars saying that if Kerry is defeated this election, it will be like the parade Vietnam vets never had. But at least during Vietnam, you could see their caskets coming home. Bush won't even allow that now, and the republicans are fine with it, because they're afraid that if Americans actually saw the cost of their splendid little war, they'd stop supporting it. So now, in this war, the wounded and the dead must be invisible. And now the republicans have reduced the Purple Heart to a band-aid. But of course.

Monday August 30, 2004

The Fire And The Metal

Rockin' good column on the Time Magazine site from Michael Kinsley:

What do we know about George W. Bush that we didn't know four years ago, when most of us voted for someone else? We ought to know a lot more. Never has anyone become President of the United States less pretested by life. And never has any President been tested so dramatically so soon after taking office.

He was born at the intersection of two elites—the Eastern Wasp establishment and the Texas oiligarchy. He gimme'd his way through America's top educational institutions. In his 40s, he was still a kid, hanging around his father's White House with not much to do. A decade later, without actually winning the most votes, he was President himself. The average gas-station attendant struggled harder to get where he or she is than did George W. Bush. Then came Sept. 11.

...

In four years, this small man had two historic opportunities to reach for greatness, to lead this country to a new and better place, and he passed up both. The first was when the Democrats patriotically bowed to a Supreme Court decision they believed to be wrong, if not corrupt, so that the U.S. could avoid a further constitutional crisis. What a moment for bipartisanship! Maybe put more than a token Democrat in the Cabinet? Not a chance.

George W. Bush's second opportunity came on Sept. 11, 2001. Past grievances suddenly seemed petty, current disagreements seemed irrelevant, and, even among Bush's opponents, desperate hope replaced sullen doubts that our nation's leader would be up to the task. Bush got this gift from the opposition—the suspension of dislike and disbelief—without doing anything to deserve it. He could have asked for and got anything he wanted in the weeks and months after 9/11.

And he decided to invade Iraq.

For once, George W. Bush was tested. And he flunked.

Go read the whole thing. I particularly liked the line about how Bush's stove hasn't been lit.

Sunday August 29, 2004

Let Us Prey...

There is an unofficial rule that says in any discussion, when Nazism is invoked, that discussion has run its course and should be declared over. Well and good if the comparison is trite. But what about when the discussion is about right wing political fanatics? Then I think, Santayana's law, not Godwin's should prevail:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Via Atrios and John Aravosis... The opening prayers of the GOP convention will be led by a lady who compares support for same sex marriage, with support for Hitler. How...unsurprising.

Again...by way of Atrios, this reply to Ms. Dew puts things into perspective:

Editor:

Sheri Dew, President of Deseret Book and former member of the LDS Church Relief Society General Presidency, recently compared those who do not oppose gay marriage to those who did not oppose Hitler’s rise to power. It is not my intent to debate the pros and cons of gay marriage. Such a discussion with her would be pointless.

It is, however, mind boggling that she could make such a naive, outrageous and patently offensive statement. I can’t decide if she simply doesn’t understand the gravity of the Holocaust or if it was a calculated attempt to garner support for her point of view through the use of lies, fear tactics and sensationalistic rhetoric. Either way, it is a sad commentary coming from someone of her education and background.

I would have thought that the President of Deseret Book would at least be educated enough to know that homosexuals were also targeted by the Nazis. Homosexuals were arrested and sent to Dachau, Mauthausen and other concentration camps. Homosexuals were enslaved, beaten, raped, tortured and murdered alongside the Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, common criminals and other “undesireables” considered to be a threat to Hitler, morality and the Nazi Party. Unlike the others, however, upon liberation by the Allied Forces, homosexuals were sent to prison to complete their sentences. Murderers, thieves and other common criminals were released from the camps while homosexuals were re-imprisoned for their sexual orientation. To suggest that those who support gay marriage would have also supported the Nazis is illogical, dishonest and just plain stupid.

If Dew still wishes to ignore documented world history perhaps a refresher course in LDS church history is in order. Concerned members of the LDS Church in Germany asked then-president Heber J. Grant what they should do about Hitler’s rise in power. He told them not to make waves but rather to obey the 12th Article of Faith, which required them to honor and sustain their elected leaders. I could more accurately rephrase her statement to say those who oppose gay marriage are like the members of the LDS church who, at the counsel of their prophet, did not oppose Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Certainly she must aware of the story of Helmuth Hubener. Deseret Book has sold at least three books about him and one of its recent ad campaigns featured his story. He was an LDS youth who, with a few friends, secretly fought against Hitler and the Nazis. He was eventually arrested and executed for those actions but not before the LDS church excommunicated him for “conduct unbecoming a member of the church” or, as she so succinctly put it, opposing Hitler’s rise to power. By her comparison, the LDS leaders of the time, including President Heber J. Grant, were the type of people who would have supported gay marriage.

Maybe she should learn a little bit about Hitler and the Holocaust before calling anyone else a Nazi.

As much as I disagree with her, I am realistic enough to understand that her views vis-à-vis gay marriage will not change. She has been told what to believe and, like so many Nazi soldiers, she will unquestioningly follow orders. Still, she should be ashamed for what she said. She should beg her God, her church and every group that was ever targeted by the Nazis to forgive her for having made such a disgusting and hate-mongering statement.

William H. Munk
Salt Lake City, Utah

Or not. Bush thinks she should lead the Republicans in prayer. There is no bigger laugh in this life then listening to Hitler's soul brothers call the people they hate Nazis. It wasn't all that long ago, that Paul Cameron, the quack whose anti-gay junk science they can't quote often enough, was talking about exterminating homosexuals as a means of controlling AIDS:

Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.

Paul Cameron, speaking at the 1985 Conservative Political Action Conference

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew...

Pastor Martin Niemöller

Actually...first they came for the homosexuals, though not by much. The Nazi revised anti-gay paragraph 175 went into effect on September 1, 1935. The Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race went into effect on September 15, 1935. And as Mr. Munk points out, when the concentration camps were liberated, the homosexuals were not.

And look who's coming for us now...heads bowed in prayer instead of arms raised. But the sentiment's the same. The sentiment is exactly the same.

Saturday August 28, 2004

Broken Links

Sorry about the broken perma links. They're fixed now.

Gravitiation

Man...I never thought I'd find myself getting into a soap opera plot. Damn. Maki Murakami has me waiting impatiently now for each new volume.

It's a pretty twisty (as in convoluted) plot. But aren't they all (soap operas that is)? I haven't enjoyed a story about a gay couple since Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald-Mage novels.

Sing For Me, You Angel Voiced Pervert

While a Orson Scott Card was an undergraduate theatre student, he once wrote in his infamous essay The Hypocrites of Homosexuality he became aware of the "underculture of homosexuality among my friends and acquaintances." He wrote of that time that he learned that being homosexual does not destroy a person's talent, and that for "most of them their highest allegiance was to their membership in the community that gave them access to sex." Thus do homophobes allow themselves to simultaneously dehumanize gay people, while giving themselves permission to enjoy the results of their labors, particularly the artistic ones. We may be sex addicted perverts who just want to rape children every chance we get, but boy we can sure decorate a stage.

And sing beautifully. Card this week, in the Rhino Times reviews K.D. Lang's newest album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel:

Why is k.d. lang so brilliant, when she never does the full-out from-the-belt style that works so well for most of the great country singers? I think it's the fact that she is always singing the words - she finds a way to mean the songs, not just vocalize them. She sings from the heart, yet with an intimacy that makes it so you wish you were in the same room with her - not a concert hall, a living room, listening to a friend break your heart with her music.

You'd almost never know that this is the same man who said that "Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society." Lang has never bothered to hide her Lesbianism, and has taken many a pubic stand against anti gay discrimination. Yet here Card tells his readers she is "brilliant". More obscenely, he wishes she could sing just for him, as a friend.

Expropriation. Something which Card complained about not all that long ago, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court said that same sex couples have the same right to marry that opposite sex couples do. He was complaining then, that homosexuals were stealing something precious from him:

But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society - to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction.

So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes.

Orson Scott Card - Humpty Dumpty Logic

Priceless. Not only should Lang's union be denied the rights his is, but for flagrantly violating society's regulation of sexual behavior she belongs in a prison cell. A punch in the stomach one moment, a kick in the face the next, and then...applause. He can work to deny us equal rights, he can use his writing talents and his public voice to keep us second class citizens one day, and the next drink from the beauty gay and lesbian artists create. And gay people are stealing from him.

Sing for me. Sing you angel voiced deviant. Sing for me, in your prison cell. It just breaks my heart how beautiful your song is.

[Edited slightly...]

Wednesday August 25, 2004

Oh Grow A Fucking Brain Rex...

Rex Wockner. Journalist. Commentator. Sucker.

Every once in a while, George W. Bush slips up and reveals that he really doesn't share the radical right's antigay agenda.

Now...where have I heard this before. Oh...right. In 2000. The Log Cabin was babbling this all through the campaign, and kept on babbling it right up to the moment he endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment. What does it say about a journalist, that they can still fall for a load of bullshit that even the Log Cabin Republicans don't buy anymore?

Bush said on the Larry King show several weeks ago that, gosh, he didn't have any problem with the states providing legal protection for gay couples. Oh...but just not marriage. King, being King, didn't press the Smirking Fratboy Jackass on the fact that the FMA prevents the states from doing just that, in language even a dead pig on a stick could read and understand. And it's frustrating sometimes to see straight journalists take the spin doctors at their word about what the FMA would do, instead of actually reading the goddamned thing. But you can reasonably expect more from a gay journalist. Wockner, having a bit more then just a professional stake in knowing what Bush is talking about there, should know better. Instead, he draws this amazing conclusion:

George would support laws that give same-sex couples matrimonial rights. There's no other possible interpretation. Well, I suppose there is one: He says contradictory things. That may be true, but I think if we listen to what George Bush says when he's not reading a prepared speech, we are more likely to hear the real George W. Bush. And that person seems to favor equality for gay people except for granting them access to marriage. Guess who else believes exactly that? John Kerry and John Edwards. Interesting stuff.

The Real George Bush. The Real George Bush. The Real George Bush. Wockner, if you think you glimpsed a peek at the Real George Bush in that little Larry King moment, then you are not merely clueless, you define cluelessness.

I'll show you a glimpse into the Real George Bush:

Every now and again Shrub W. Bush will stop you faster than pullin' on the whoa reins. You can go along for long periods thinkin' to yourself, "Don't agree with him about dog, but he seems like an amiable fellow." And then he says something that sort of makes your teeth hurt.

...

Probably the best known of the "whoa" moments with W. Bush comes from an interview with Tucker Carlson printed in Talk magazine, concerning the execution of Karla Faye Tucker. Bush has now signed more than 100 warrants of execution, but, as you may recall, the born-again Tucker drew attention both for being female and for having an extensive prison ministry.

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions like, "What would you say to Governor Bush?" "What was her answer?" I wonder.

"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."

I must have look shocked - ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush - because he immediately stops smirking.

Tucker also reported that the exchange mimicked by Bush never took place; Bush made it up.

Well, that was a moment.

Molly Ivins, The Nation, December 1999

And one, let it be said, that more people should have paid attention to. Understand the kind of man Tucker Carlson saw in that moment, and you understand the Bush presidency. That Bush is no Fred Phelps is no mark of goodness. There is worse. The human gutter goes deeper then Fred Phelps.

Now, you should still vote for Kerry and Edwards because they will actually work to give us everything short of marriage. Bush, on the other hand, might ignore his personal beliefs and, when push comes to shove, throw raw meat to the carnivores who hate gays. That's too bad, but it's nice to know he's not a crazed, right-wing, fundamentalist-Christian gay-hater himself. And it's nice that he periodically let's that fact slip out. It makes me ever-so-slightly less terrorized by the (still unthinkable) idea of Four More Years.

Gosh that's too bad Rex, because it should scare you even more.

Question: is a man who will do the bidding of bigots even if he doesn't share their prejudices, for the sake of their favor, more or less depraved then those bigots?

This is a question an adult should be able to readily answer. And a lot of people who were not quite grown up in 2000, sure as hell should have grown up since.

War Is A Continuation Of Politics By Other Means...(continued...)

Brad Delong this morning, quotes a New Yorker article on the origins of World War One:

Two kinds of “inevitablism” have long held sway.... One... is that the war was the certain consequence of imperial overstretch and colonial rivalry.... Of this hypothesis, nothing really remains.... Capital’s overwhelming desire was for peace and continued globalization. It was Lord Rothschild who entreated the Times of London to tone down the belligerence of its articles, and right up to the end the governor of the Bank of England was begging the Liberal cabinet minister Lloyd George, “with tears in his eyes,” to keep Britain out of war. What does survive... is a smaller and more succinct point: in every European country, the center-right establishment, faced with some kind of social-democratic or socialist challenge, reasoned that a national call to arms would be the one sure antidote to internal division. In every case—even in France, where the lines of division ran deepest—this turned out to be true, and “class division melted like butter in the frying pan of nationalism,” as the historian John Lukacs puts it.

Emphasis mine. Capitalism neither requires, nor encourages war. But one thing the free market does very well is act as an engine for social change. Too well for some people, and not just Luddites. My favorite case in point: the effect of the personal computer on the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights. Oh yes...it revolutionized the way small businesses work, but look at the social impact on just this one small minority. For the first time in history, we didn't have to see each other through heterosexual eyes. No matter what remote, lonely part of the country we were in, we could reach out to each other, hear our own stories, and see ourselves in them. That was a powerful change in our self awareness as a people. More then anything else I believe this self awareness, this ability to see ourselves through our own eyes, is the motor now powering our struggle for full and equal rights. And look who is howling the loudest about it. It's not the business people, who if anything would rather market to us, if not for the bellyaching from...

...the center-right establishment, faced with some kind of social-democratic or socialist challenge, reasoned that a national call to arms would be the one sure antidote to internal division.

We're loosing control. Let's have a war. A splendid little war. Except that war recognizes no master.

Tuesday August 24, 2004

War Is A Continuation Of Politics By Other Means...

Remind me again...what was that rational for invading Iraq? I mean...besides the claptrap about the threat Saddam posed to the United States. That one about how if we could just remove Saddam from power, and establish a democracy right in the heart of the despotic middle east, then all the tyrants of the middle east would fall. Democracy would flower everywhere. I remember now that I heard that one once before. It had a name. The Domino Theory.

Once upon a time it was communism that would make the dominos fall. Now it's democracy. We fought a war to prevent the dominos from falling. We're fighting one now to make them fall. And Iraq, I keep hearing, is not Vietnam. But what was Vietnam if not a product of the bellicose, reactionary, jingoistic, racist, sexist, McCarthyite 1950s. The canard is the Vietnam was Johnson's war. But like the 60s, you can't understand Vietnam without understanding the 50s. The irony now is that you really can't understand Iraq, without understanding the 50s. More to the point, you can't understand what's going on in Washington now, without understanding what we once called The Establishment: that aggregate of powers, political and corporate, that deeply and bitterly and eternally resents everyone who successfully opposed it in the sixties.

I remember precisely when this premonition of perpetual division first struck me. On Aug. 19, 1992, the third night of the Republican National Convention in Houston, Barbara Bush and Marilyn Quayle were the featured speakers. The first lady praised her husband's fine qualities and Mrs. Quayle turned her fire on the Bill Clinton Democrats, who had just finished their convention in New York.

Through almost gritted teeth, Marilyn Quayle declared that those people in Madison Square Garden, who were claiming the mantle of leadership for a new generation, were usurpers. "Dan and I are members of the baby boom generation, too," she said. "We are all shaped by the times in which we live. I came of age in a time of turbulent social change. Some of it was good, such as civil rights; much of it was questionable."

And then she drew the line that has not been erased: "Remember, not everyone joined in the counterculture. Not everyone demonstrated, dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution or dodged the draft. Not everyone concluded that American society was so bad that it had to be radically remade by social revolution. . . . The majority of my generation lived by the credo our parents taught us: We believed in God, in hard work and personal discipline, in our nation's essential goodness, and in the opportunity it promised those willing to work for it. . . . Though we knew some changes needed to be made, we did not believe in destroying America to save it."

When she finished, I turned to my Post colleague Dan Balz, a contemporary of the Clintons and the Quayles, and said, "I suddenly have this vision -- that when you guys reach the nursing homes, you're going to be leaning on your walkers and beating each other with your canes, because you still will not have settled the arguments from the Sixties."

David S. Broder, The Washington Post: Swift Boats And Old Wounds

As usual, Broder glosses over Quayle's reliable right wing hypocrisy. Marilyn Quayle can aver of the 60s that "some of it" like the civil rights movement, was good, but the fact is that her kind were busy back then fighting tooth and nail against every small inch of ground gained by the civil rights movement, as fiercely and as bitterly as they could. As far as Quayle and her kind were concerned, all of it was bad. And, let's be real here, without a doubt they still feel that way. What political movement is leading the charge to abolish affirmative action, and laws against race discrimination (under the guise of making the laws "color blind"), and never mind the fact that black people in the United States are still facing powerful and bitter racial discrimination in jobs, housing, and even still, even still in their basic right just to vote. Here's the latest from Florida, the state that "accidently" purged thousands of black voters from its rolls in 2000:

State police officers have been going into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogating them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers, and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

Bob Herbert, Voters intimidated in Florida

This is Jeb Bush's state. This is a state run by Quayle's fellow True Blue One-Hundred Percent Americans. If there had been no civil rights action in the 50s and 60s, and the much despised Warren Court, the fact that black people couldn't vote somewhere in the south wouldn't even be news. The political movement Quayle represents still thinks they shouldn't be allowed to vote, or at best, should be allowed to vote for republicans only. But they know better then to actually say so.

"Some of it was good, such as civil rights..." This is such transparently rote lip service to the concept of liberty and justice for all that you have to wonder who the hell takes it seriously. Why sakes alive...civil rights turned out to be good after all..! Reading it is comparable to hearing them babbling about how they have nothing against homosexuals really, they just want to protect the institution of marriage. Why is the right so bitter about the culture wars of the sixties? One reason would be that they have to keep mouthing slogans about civil rights that they couldn't more clearly despise. It was a better day, when the starting point of every political discussion in America was the tacit understanding that some Americans were more equal then others.

Fighting the Establishment back then was brutal, and now they are back in power. They remember names. They remembered Bill Clinton.