Looks like John Kerry has decided to take Clinton's advice after all and throw us gays under the bus. He calls supporting gay marriage a "mistake." He also seems to be pretty out of touch with the sentiments of his own state. Looks like he's grabbing early for the conservative vote in '08. I'd say the only mistake would be supporting him for Presidential candidate again (second to Hillary of course). But that is just the lowly opinion of one gay man who is sick of seeing gays become more & more the government-sponsored Public Enemy #1. To Kerry, the FDA, Bush, Focus on the Family, dkos, and all you fence-sitters: fuck you very much. It's time to get dead serious or we don't have a future. Thanks to SS and people like her for the continued love & support. When they start actively persecuting us, we're going to need your help!
Oh, Heavens to Betsy—Bush in Bed with Abramoff
There’s a backstory that lurks behind Bush’s decision to stand by DeLay. It involves Greenberg Traurig, the firm that employed the powerful lobbyist who paid for palatial DeLay junkets, and Abramoff staffers, who were footsoldiers in the Florida recount. Greenberg Traurig has yet to receive more than $314,000 in legal fees charged to a Bush committee during the 2000 Florida recount, RAW STORY can confirm.This Abramoff stinks to high heaven, and now we find out his firm was involved in the Florida recount and donated $300,000+ to it in violation of Bush’s committee’s own $5,000 maximum rule. Complete garbage. Rank corruption. And the mainstream media will never, ever report it. Pfft.
As a corporation, Greenberg’s unpaid tab represents a massive in-kind campaign contribution, far larger than anything that went unreported by DeLay. But it appears to be legal: corporations are allowed to donate any amount to the nebulous type of committee employed during the recount. It would, however, violate the committee's self-imposed $5,000 contribution limit from individual donors.
[…]
A White House official, who declined to be named, referred questions to the Republican National Committee.
“These are campaign issues,” the official said. “We work on doing the people’s business. The RNC handles all campaign-related [expenses].”
“We are funded through taxpayer funds, so we don’t deal with any campaign related issues,” the official added.
[…]
Bush has largely ducked the scandals surrounding Abramoff, but he was certainly a beneficiary of the lobbyist’s fundraising: Abramoff was a Bush Pioneer, raising more than $120,000 for the 2004 presidential campaign.
He had the largest lobbyist accounts of any Pioneer, at $26 million.
In his Greenberg Traurig biography, which has since been stripped, the firm wrote, “Jack is directly involved in the Republican party and conservative movement leadership structures and is one of the leading fund raisers for the party and its congressional candidates.”
Those close to Abramoff—including his partner Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay press secretary who is also being investigated for lobbying deals—bragged about their access to the president.
"Jack has a relationship with the President," Scanlon told the New Times Broward-Palm Beach in February 2001. "He doesn't have a bat phone or anything, but if he wanted an appointment, he would have one."
Friday Blogrollin’
As Skippy would say, say hello to…
The Moderate Voice, where you’ll find stuff of interest from across the political spectrum.
BearCastle Blog, where you’ll find lots of fun stuff, including everything you ever wanted to know about being a bear.
Arse Poetica, where you’ll find a little bit of everything wonderful.
Zen Comix, where you’ll find...oh, just have a look.
Dirty Liberal Words, where you’ll find secularism, science, socialism, and every other dirty liberal word.
Trust Me, You Have No Idea How Much I Hate Bush—and Dick Isn’t That Great Either, which I think speaks for itself, and has been abbreviated on the blogroll to “Trust Me, You Have No Idea…”
Check ’em out!
Gays, Please Keep Your Sperm to Yourselves
Okay, we’ve seriously hit a new low. You thought it couldn’t get any lower? Wrong.
The Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.First of all, if I were to go to a sperm bank, I would assume that all the possible donors’ sperm would have been thoroughly screened, so shouldn’t this be a moot point? There is absolutely no reason for this aside from flat-out bigotry. Something tells me that this has far less to do with HIV than the idea of a “gay gene” being passed on to another generation, for which there is no screening, but a wide acceptance of the theory that homosexuality is genetic. What better way to stop the transmission of a possible gay gene than to ban gay donors at sperm banks?
The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.
"Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years," said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.
[…]
But it is the provision's symbolic aspect that particularly troubles gay-rights groups. Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, has called it "policy based on bigotry."
"The part I find most offensive — and a little frightening — is that it isn't based on good science," Cathcart said. "There's a steadily increasing trend of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay men out of the pool."
For all the lip service that the Dominionists give to their alleged belief that homosexuality is a choice, somewhere deep down they know it is not a choice, not for everyone. And that’s what’s driving this policy—an attempt to keep homosexuality out of the gene pool as much as possible. They don’t want gays having kids, even if it’s by way of sperm donation.
I don’t care if they argue HIV from now to eternity; this is about quarantining gays and trying to keep them out of the general population. It’s complete bullshit, and hiding behind some crapass argument about HIV is truly pathetic, especially considering that for a very, very long time anyone of any sexual orientation has been playing roulette with his or her life if they go around having unprotected, anonymous sex. It hasn’t been called the Gay Cancer since Reagan was around (and doing his best to ignore it), and that’s because we’re all at risk. Surely the FDA is well aware of the statistics on the risks among all people, which makes this obvious as the red herring that it is.
Fucking cunts.
And let me just say once again that it doesn’t really matter if being gay is predestined by one’s genes or is the result of a difficult choice or is the consequence of a choice that’s as easy as whether to eat a plate of spaghetti or a plate of shit. I don’t care why you’re gay, because it doesn’t make any fucking difference. Being gay doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights and so no one needs to worry their bigoted little heads about it. Go mind your own goddamned business and leave people who aren’t trying to tell you whom to fuck or whom to love or whom to marry the hell alone so they can have the same freedom that you have.
(Hat tip Pam.)
Fear and Self-Loathing in Spokane
Big Brass Blogger JJ is reporting that Spokane Mayor Jim West, another closeted, self-hating Republican queer who as recently as last week threatened to get rid of newly-instated domestic partnership benefits for Spokane City employees, has been outed. And yowza—this one really takes the cake, having used his position as Mayor to appoint a young and unqualified man to a position with the Spokane HRC and his roles as a sheriff’s deputy and (surprise, surprise) a Boy Scout leader to facilitate sexual relationships with boys and young men.
Go read the rest at Big Brass Blog. JJ’s got the big scoop, and he’ll be keeping the info coming as he gets it.
Cry Me a River
Today, the Green Knight (who, if he isn’t on your blogroll and/or daily reading rounds yet, seriously should be) quotes and responds to George Will, who’s concerned about the Dominionists’ hold over his party in a column called The Christian Complex:
[M]any Christians are joining today's scramble for the status of victims. There is much lamentation about various "assaults" on "people of faith." Christians are indeed experiencing some petty insults and indignities concerning things such as restrictions on school Christmas observances. But their persecution complex is unbecoming because it is unrealistic...While in some way it’s reassuring that the secular (or at least, non-Dominionist) Right is starting to express some alarm about the ever-tightening chokehold the Dominionists have on the GOP, my overwhelming reaction was pretty much boo-fucking-hoo—you slept with ’em, don’t complain now that they’re still in your bed. No matter how deep down I reach into my reserve of sympathy for those besieged by the Dominionists, I find very little for members of the GOP who were perfectly content to win elections on the backs of the nuts, just so long as they never expected any power within the party. Now that the nuts are tired of being used, and want to collect on three decades’ worth of IOUs in the form of wingnut legislation prohibiting rights that the old guard GOP quite enjoys right along with the Left who fought for them, I’m not about to feel sorry for those who have to pay this suddenly demanding piper.
Religion is today banished from the public square? John Kennedy finished his first report to the nation on the Soviet missiles in Cuba with these words: "Thank you and good night." It would be a rash president who today did not conclude a major address by saying, as President Ronald Reagan began the custom of doing, something very like "God bless America."
The Green Knight adds:
As Thomas Frank has explained, the job of the religious right for the past couple of decades has been to be lower-class, rank-and-file Republicans, fighting the culture wars during election cycles, then quietly demobilizing while their elected representatives did nothing on cultural issues but worked instead to dismantle the welfare state. The role of the religious right was that of useful idiots, and the upper class of their party was content to treat them as such.The hell with ’em indeed. George Will and his ilk deserve neither our sympathy nor our direct support, though of course we ought to continue doing everything we can to counter the influence of the Dominionists on our government. But to offer any kind of condolences to members of a party who have fallen victim to their own opportunism and greed would be foolish, and far more than the guards who let them in the door deserve. This is a bill that’s not ours to pay.
But now, they have all but completely taken over the Republican Party. … That has got to make members of the secular right like Will very nervous indeed.
The Green Knight says, the hell with 'em. They set all this up for themselves back in the late 70s, when they courted the fundamentalists to get Reagan elected. Until then, most fundamentalist American Christians never voted because it was too worldly. Then, the Republican Party convinced them to get politicized -- and man, have they ever gotten politicized. The secular Republicans thought they could ride the tiger; now, they're ending up as tiger chow. Somehow, the Green Knight just can't bring himself to sympathize with their plight.
In talking with people like Will before the election, begging them to vote for the party that actually would pursue fiscal conservatism, state's rights, and an intelligent foreign policy, the reason they cited for voting for Bush was because he gives them tax breaks.
The Democrats might raise my taxes.
I heard it over and over. Sure, they were concerned about the Dominionists' hold on the party, and sure, the Iraq War wasn't really working out as planned, and sure, the deficit was spinning out of control...but they didn't want to pay a single friggin' penny more; they weren’t interested in kicking in their fair share, not to help strengthen the safety net that keeps our country on a strong foundation, not to alleviate our massive fiscal crisis, not even to help pay for the war that they supported. So they voted for Bush. And now some of these same people are freaking out about the Dominionists? Tough. Nothing’s happening now that wasn’t happening during Bush’s first disastrous term, wasn’t patently obvious before the election. The Terri Schiavo debacle, Justice Sunday, and the rest—none of it came without warning. They chose to ignore the signs, so this is what they get, the stingy bastards.
We’re all suffering because of your choices. So suck it up, bitches. You’re on your own.
More Foreplay…
Brad is really getting me primed and ready for a serious toe-curler:
In the first of several reports from RAW STORY on an expansion of the widening fundraising morass currently plaguing Republican House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, the Whitehouse itself is now being named as a major beneficiary of Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm in dollar numbers that dwarf anything DeLay has so far been tied to!!!That Jack Abramoff sure is a tricky little bugger.
Colossus: X-Man, Super Hero and Rampant Homosexual
In an effort to reach out to a newer, younger audience, Marvel has spent the last few years updating its now somewhat venerable characters, and have started their stories over from scratch in a new series of “Ultimate” titles. Thus far they have developed an Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates (updated Avengers), Ultimate Iron-Man and Ultimate Fantastic Four. These new titles have proved a great success, and I have enjoyed them thoroughly.
The quality of the writing has been excellent, and the willingness Marvel has shown to use these new titles as a means of tackling head on some of our society’s touchiest subjects is something to be admired. That they have approached many of these issues with an obvious liberal bias is something I have admired even more. Of particular cathartic value was the scene in Ultimate X-Men, where a naked and groveling President Bush was shown cowering on the White House lawn, as Magneto instructed him to “clean his boots.” However, in addition to poking fun at our Commander-in-Chief, they have tried hard to weave a message of tolerance into their stories, and have attempted to instruct their young readers to both question established authority and to be skeptical of biased media reporting.
The Ultimate X-Men title has probably been of the greatest value in this regard, and as anyone who has seen the movies will know, Marvel are drawing many parallels between the persecution mutants face, and the ordeal that gay people encounter in our society – especially during puberty. This theme has been taken even further in the comic books, and they recently developed an entire story arc centered on the tribulations of a teenager who is not only a mutant, but also gay. The compassion displayed by the X-Men toward this kid, and their utter contempt for those that would discriminate against an individual because they are “different” in some essentially superfluous way, is certainly a good example to any teenager. Marvel didn’t stop there, though, and they have added a gay X-Man to the team: Colossus. Not in an overt or showy way, mind you, which is a good thing, since the impression it gave was that the other X-Men don’t care that Colossus was gay, and that his sexuality is not a big deal.
I think Marvel has been very brave to tackle these issues in the way they have; it certainly wasn’t something that they had to do in order to sell comic books, and they are opening themselves up to potentially damaging criticism from the Christ Nazis. It actually surprises me that they haven’t received more heat than they have, especially given the ridiculous furor over Sponge Bob’s supposed role in the “Homosexual Agenda.”
The liberal’s greatest weapon: pop culture, remains sharp and potent, and I find it encouraging that even under the Right’s rabid onslaught, it continues to be uncompromising. Until conservatives develop a sense of humor, we will continue to have an advantage in this area, and with Episode III coming out in a couple of weeks, there is plenty to look forward to.
Get De-Lurkified!
Elise at After School Snack has declared this De-Lurking Week. So, if there are any silent but loyal Shakers out there, speak up, leave a comment, and reveal yourselves (if you dare)!
(Apologies for the lack of in-depth content today; I’m really busy at work, but I will, with any luck, have some stuff up later today about healthcare, the state of the armed forces, and why RINOs deserve little more from the Left than a kick in the patoot.)
Scandal A-Brewin'?
Ooh, this could be good:BREAKING!!! DELAY FUNDRAISING SCANDAL EXPANDS INTO WHITE HOUSE!!! BIG TIME!!!
Brad’s on the case. I’ll keep you posted.
Bush-Cheney Named as Beneficiaries of Lobbying Firm Largesse in Numbers Far Beyond Anything So Far Tied to Embattled House Majority Leader!!!
...DEVELOPING VERY HARD!!!...MORE DETAILS SHORTLY!!!...
Check under Cheney's sticky, sticky mattress.
So $100 Million just up and fucking vanished in Iraq. Wow. What a shock.
WASHINGTON - U.S. government mismanagement of assets in
Iraq, from the lack of proper documentation on nearly $100 million in cash to millions of dollars worth of unaccounted-for equipment, are setting back efforts to fight corruption in the fledgling democracy, auditors and critics say.
Yeah, because it's their democracy that's corrupt.
The latest indication of that came Wednesday when investigators released a report saying $96.6 million in cash could not be properly accounted for. The total included more than $7 million that was simply gone, according to the report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
Seven million. Seven frickin' million. Just... gone.
Part of the problem was a last-minute push to spend millions on reconstruction projects before the interim Iraqi government took over, the report said. One agent got $6.75 million in cash a week before the hand over, with the expectation that the money would be spent before the Iraqis took power, the report said.
Several of these agents "were under the impression that it was more important to quickly distribute the money to the region than to obtain all necessary documentation," the report said.
Controls over the cash were so lax that two of the agents hired to distribute the money were allowed to leave Iraq before they had accounted for all of it, the report said. Between them, those two had been given more than $1.4 million in cash which remains unaccounted for, the report said.
Of course it does. And I guarantee this is the last we're going to hear about it.
Seriously, how can this be so fucking sloppy? The instant the Iraq invasion was discussed, the Bush administration and all of their rich buddies' eyes were replaced with cartoon dollar signs. It's an orgy of money over there, and no one is keeping track.
Do I really need to state the obvious "if we used that money over here" usual comments? I didn't think so.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go fill my car with gas. At $2.55 a gallon.
Cross-posted from my blog.
Insurance by the Numbers
Via Think Progress:
In honor of Cover the Uninsured Week:
Number of currently uninsured Americans: 45 million
Number of working Americans with no health insurance: 20 million
Percent of uninsured Americans unable to see a doctor when they needed to in 12 month period: 41
Average cost of visit to hospital for Americans with no health insurance: $1,000
Amount the U.S. loses per year on “uncompensated” care for people with no insurance: $41 billion
Cuts in Medicaid passed by Congress last week, over five years: $10 billion
Percent of uninsured Americans who would benefit from President Bush’s proposed Health Savings Accounts: 0.3
Percent of U.S. adults who cite lowering health care costs and health insurance as a top priority for the president and Congress: 63
Percent of Americans who say health care is the “single most important issue” for Congress to address in 2005: 10
Percent who say Social Security is the “single most important issue": 2
Speeches President Bush and Vice President Cheney have given on health care this week: 0
Speeches they’ve given on Social Security: 4
Number of times the words “health care” or “uninsured” appear in transcripts of White House press gaggles this week: 0
Days since President Bush spoke about the issue of health care: 96
More on this later, as time allows.
Bleh
Looks like Tony Blair's back in.
The only comfort this brings is that my British friends can stop going on at me about how idiotic Americans are for voting Bush back into office.
Question of the Day (Fun)
Mr. Shakes, our pal Mickey Mouse (definitely not his real name), and I like to play a game where we cast the movie of each other's lives. Mr. Shakes would be played by Colin Firth, without question. They don't look alike (although they're both tall and broad-shouldered); it's more the sort of awkward doofus underneath the vaguely uptight veneer that begs the comparison. Mr. Shakes and Mickey can't agree on who would play me. Mickey swears it would be Debra Winger (the neurotic, intelligent, goofy vote), and Mr. Shakes claims it's Natalie Portman's character in Garden State (which I suppose is pretty fair, considering I have spontaneously tap-danced to make him laugh, have a weakness for small, furry creatures, and do other randomly strange things like name my cigarette lighters which he finds inimitably funny). And Pam says I look like Dawn French, so I suppose she's up for this unenviable gig, too.
So, who would be cast to play you in the movie of your life?
Don’t Shit Where You Eat…
…and don’t torch the place where you work. (Unless, of course, you’re Milton Waddams, because having your red Swingline stapler repeatedly nicked really is kinda crappy.) Anyhoo, one would think most people have no trouble heeding either of those suggestions, but, apparently, the Revered Harold Hunter and his wife Patricia aren’t most people.
A pastor and his wife have been charged with arson in a fire that gutted their church last week, authorities said Tuesday.Good Christian serial killers, godly Congressman with lists of ethics violations as long as my arm, ministers who burn down their own churches…yeah, I’m getting convinced more and more every day why being Christian should be the primary requirement for serving on the bench, or as president, or in any other governmental role.
The Monday arrests of The Rev. Harold Hunter and Patricia Hunter came just one day after the pastor gave a sermon in which he said he prayed for the "sick, sadistic" person who burned down the church. No one was hurt in the blaze.
Police would not discuss a possible motive, but said they had suspected that Thursday's fire and three earlier acts of vandalism at the 64-year-old Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church were an inside job.
"We found some gas that was located on the pastor's shoes and we also found clothing in the residence that had gasoline on it," said Summerville Police Capt. Craig Legates.
Hunter, 55, who had been pastor for three years, had dreams of building a new church but no solid plans, said Ruthmae Whitney, a member of the church for 40 years.
During services Sunday, which were held at another church, Hunter had urged parishioners not to talk to the police, saying authorities were looking for suspects and some church members were "spreading gossip" and "telling lies."
How much more of this kind of stuff has to get reported before we can let die the erroneous and prejudiced misperception that simply saying you’re a Christian entitles you to be regarded as a good person, regardless of whether or not you act like one? Pfft.
Update Your Blogrolls!
PSoTD has moved! And they're looking very sexxxxxy. So make sure you update your blogrolls...and if PSoTD isn't on your blogroll, what the heck's your problem? Add 'em!
Wednesday Blogwhorin'
Your chance to promote your blog, other blogs, and various things of interest. What's going on?
Quickies: By the Numbers
Bush’s approval rating has fallen to 47%, down from his 2005 high on Feb. 4 of 54%. The only question I have is what have the dingdongs who voted for him come to learn in the past four months that wasn’t already apparent to anyone with a working brain?
The Army’s recruiting woes continue, with its April goal falling short by 42%, leaving its year-to-date recruitment 16% behind the goal. The Army Reserve has also fallen short of its recruitment goal for April by 37%. This marks the first time the Army has missed a monthly recruitment goal since May of 2000. The Marines are 2% behind their year-to-date goal.
Reporters Without Borders reports that 53 journalists were killed in 2004, making it the highest number of deaths since 50 journalists were killed in 1955. In the first four months of 2005, 22 journalists have been killed, nine of them in Iraq, which tops the list of the five deadliest places for journalists, followed by the Philippines, Colombia, Bangladesh, and Russia.
