Provided by Mr. Shakes, who is just evil.
If the 2008 presidential contest lined up like this:
Democratic Ticket—Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden
Republican Ticket—John McCain and Bill Frist
...and no third party options were available, who would you vote for?
Hmm, a choice between someone who kisses Bush and someone who hugs him. I guess I'd just have to abstain.
Question of the Day
Quote of the Day
“As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel.”
— President Bush, pointing out a scratch on his forehead (and evidently comparing clearing brush to fighting a war) while visiting wounded troops at Brooke Army Medical Center (Hat tip Crooks & Liars, who have more.)
What a jackass.
Yeah, Just Keep Blogging Away, Spud Boy....
... and enjoy your long trudge home the next time you try and fly to New York.
I wonder how long it will be before all of us are on the no-fly list?
Because the author of Bush's Brain is on it. And has been for a year. And can't do anything about it.
Gee, I can't imagine why people are making such a fuss over this wiretapping nonsense... it's not like it will harm you if you haven't done anything wrong...
The Big Message
***[Attn: This post is about Brokeback Mountain. I don't think there are any plot spoilers in it. Really, I don't. But I'm just saying.]***
Mr. Shakes and I saw Brokeback Mountain last night, and so I was finally able to go back and read Tart’s beautiful post on the film, which I skipped over before, because I avoid any press or discussion about films to which I’m really looking forward. I hadn’t managed to miss that it was a “gay cowboy love story with a Big Message,” but, knowing Ang Lee’s and Annie Proulx’s work, and knowing the inherent flaws in most Big Message hype, I prepared myself for nothing more than moving and captivating story, and that’s exactly what it was, as Tart so eloquently noted.
There is a Big Message, but it isn’t in the film. The Big Message is that the story was written, that the film was made, that it was widely released, that it received stellar reviews, that there are people who have never seen two men kiss in real life who are seeing this film and enjoying it, that—at a time when people want to change the Constitution to prevent gay marriage—the most beloved film of the year reminds us that neither hatred nor law can stop the love upon which lifetime commitment depends.
That the film itself lacks an overt political message is, in reality, what is revolutionary. This is a love story like any other love story. In its candor, Brokeback Mountain challenges the viewer not to relate—have you never longed, have you never felt the pain of loss, have you never feared judgment, have you never kept a secret from your child? Have you never loved this deeply? It doesn’t require our sympathy, but speaks to our empathy, which is what all great films do, relying on the commonality of so much of human experience. Not “Walk a mile in this guy’s shoes,” but “We’ve all tread this familiar path.” Normalizing, by virtue of universality, a gay relationship after so many people have come of age with the notion that, to paraphrase Oddjob, the way they love is unspeakably loathsome and perverse, is no small thing.
It’s easy to imagine the difference between a world in which a gay teenager has never seen an openly gay character on television or in film, and a world in which a gay teenager can watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but that misses a subtle point, which can be found somewhere between Philadelphia and Brokeback Mountain. Philadelphia set out to take its viewers on a journey of compassion and acceptance. Brokeback Mountain presupposes that a tragic love story with two male leads is as viable an option as any other—and if you don’t agree, it doesn’t try to endear its characters to you by making them saintly eunuchs. (If you don’t agree, it’s your problem.)
We look back on Philadelphia now and we sniff at its timidity—a one-dimensional cardboard cutout of a gay man, too likable to be human, stricken with a sexually transmitted disease, which seems preposterously impossible considering he never seems to touch anyone, including his partner—but at the time, it was important. One day, with any luck, we’ll look back at Brokeback Mountain in a not totally dissimilar way—why is the tragedy because they’re gay? Sniff.—because we’ll have moved on yet again. I’m reminded of the many times I’ve read that Will Smith, or Denzel Washington, or Queen Latifah, or some other black actor has gotten a role “even though it was written for a white person.” (Ooh, ahh.) It’s silly; unless key plot points are race-specific, parts are written for people, but that’s the struggle of broadening—or finally crushing all notion of—The Norm. One day, I might be reading that Ian McKellan and Rupert Everett have signed on to a May-December romantic comedy that Richard Gere and the latest busty ingénue have passed on. And no one will bat an eye, even when the gossip rags breathlessly report “even though the parts were written for straight people.”
More Hoosier Madness
Indiana State Rep. Troy A. Woodruff, R-Misogynyville has proposed a measure that would criminalize abortion in the entire state, even for women who are victims of rape or incest.
The only exception allowed under House Bill 1096 would be for women whose health or life would be permanently impaired if a pregnancy continued. The bill would define life as beginning at conception and make it a felony to perform all other abortions. Anyone convicted would face up to eight years in prison.Not to get all logical or anything, but how does forcing a woman to have a child she doesn’t want not qualify as permanently impairing her life? I’m sure Mr. Woodruff would suggest adoption, since, as everyone knows, once you give away a child, it immediately leaves your mind forever and you never have to think about it again. Honestly, who the fuck are these people?
I haven’t yet found what the punishment, if any, would be for women who have the abortion under this proposal.
Woodruff said the time is right for Indiana to confront this issue.Something tells me that last paragraph has a hell of a lot more to do with this maneuver than prayer, emotion, or what most Hoosiers want or don’t want. The anti-choice brigade sees a future where they’ve got a chance to criminalize a woman’s right to choose, and so they’re gunning for it, laying the groundwork for a challenge as soon as the court swings in their favor.
"It's something I've prayed about, and it's weighed on my heart," said Woodruff, who also is an aide to U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind.
"It's an emotional issue," Woodruff acknowledged, but he added that he thought most Hoosiers support a ban.
An Indiana law banning most abortions most likely would be challenged in the courts and could end up as a test case before the U.S. Supreme Court to possibly overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide.
Woodruff said the issue should have been left up to the states, and he's hoping a newly constituted Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts and with the possible addition of Samuel Alito, will decide the abortion issue differently than the 1973 court did.
This is why the Democrats need to filibuster Alito. See LeMew for more on that one.
As a side note, my bass-ackwards home state’s House Roads and Transportation Committee has also approved a bill that would create an "In God We Trust" license plate, and the House Judiciary Committee has established a subcommittee with the express purpose of “exploring” the details of a bill that would “prevent notes of sympathy or apology from being used in a lawsuit, including medical malpractice.” Jeebus.
How about spending some time on our massive state deficit, helping the thousands of people who are getting bankrupted by outrageous increases in property taxes to make up for it, and getting some jobs (in addition to “nurse” and “truck driver”) into the bloody state, you useless wankers.
Rest Assured, Shakers: Scooter Has Landed on His Feet
What a relief. I was so worried about the little scuzzbucket.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby , chief of staff and national security adviser to Vice President Cheney until that indictment unpleasantness a few months ago, has found a new perch as he awaits trial.Awesome. Congratulations, Scooter. I’ll take you out for a celebratory drink once I finally get another job. It’s a lot harder when you’ve been laid off for budgetary reasons as opposed to having resigned in disgrace after breaking the law.
Libby is joining the Hudson Institute -- a conservative think tank focusing on foreign policy and national security -- as a senior fellow, focusing on issues related to terrorism and Asia. He's also to advise Hudson on strategic planning and help other scholars…
We're told that his salary is on par with the going rate for the deep thinkers -- presumably at least as much as his $160,000 White House gig -- and that, if he wants, he'll probably still have time to do some consulting or work on a second novel.
IRS Tracked Political Affiliations
WTF? The IRS collected information on taxpayers’ political affiliations in 20 states, but didn’t use it because, according to IRS spokesman John Lipold, “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.” So why collect it?
[Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS] said she learned about the problem from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.Well, I suppose that makes sense. I mean, if someone is a Democrat, you just follow the smell of treason to the nearest gutter, and if someone is a Republican, you just follow the glow cast by halos to the nearest church.
“This agency should not have that type of information,” Murray said in a telephone interview from Seattle. “No one should question whether they are being audited because of party affiliation.”
Kelly said Thursday that several IRS employees had complained to the union about the practice. She said IRS officials weren’t even aware of it until she wrote them in late December.
In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform” supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes.
“This information is appropriately used to locate information on taxpayers whose accounts are delinquent,” he said.
Murray and Kelly, however, remained skeptical. Kelly said the collection of such data was even more troubling because the IRS intends to start using private collection agencies later this year to go after back taxes.Highly disturbing.
“We think Congress should suspend IRS plans to use private collections agencies until these questions have been resolved,” she said.
According to Murray’s office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
Far too Little, Far too Late...
I'm assuming that, like myself, you rolled your eyes at the announcement that Bush was "reaching out" to foreign policy bigwigs, even those that have opposed the war and criticized his policies, to get their advice on Iraq. "Surely," you thought, "this can't be anything more than a Rovian strategy to make the president look as if he might actually take the advice of anyone that disagrees with him."
Well you know what? You were right. Give yourself a cookie.
Bush and Former Cabinet Members Discuss Topic No.1: Iraq
Take the word "discuss" with a grain of salt. One, say, the size of a hippo. (Bolds mine)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 - Colin Powell said nothing - a silence that spoke volumes to many in the White House today.
His predecessor, Madeleine Albright, was a bit riled after hearing an exceedingly upbeat 40-minute briefing to 13 living former secretaries of state and defense about how well things are going in Iraq. Saying the war in Iraq was "taking up all the energy" of President Bush's foreign policy team, she asked Mr. t Bush (sic) whether he had let nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea spin out of control, and Latin America and China policy suffer by benign neglect.
So, they visited the president, expecting a serious discussion on Iraq. What they got was 40 minutes of Fox news. I'd be a little testy, myself.
"I can't let this comment stand," Mr. Bush shot back, telling Ms. Albright and the rare assembly of her colleagues, who reached back to the Kennedy White House, that his administration "can do more than one thing at a time."
The Bush administration, the president insisted, had "the best relations of any country with Japan, China and Korea," and active programs to win alliances around the world.
That was, according to some of the participants, one of the few moments of heat during an unusual White House effort to bring some of its critics into the fold and give a patina of bipartisan common ground to the strategy that Mr. Bush has laid out in recent weeks for Iraq.
Okay, seriously. When the hell are these government officials going to stop bowing and scraping to Bush's Boy King act? When is someone going to call Bush on his spoiled brat behavior? I know the office of the President demands a certain amount of respect, but jeez, everyone's always told me that to get respect, you have to earn it. I, for one, would be highly insulted if I were one of these officials, and had to keep my mouth shut and indulge a temper tantrum from the Worst President in American History. I'm sorry, lifelong failures don't get to tell people how to behave.
Okay, grab your garters, gals... here's the lulu:
But if it was a bipartisan consultation, as advertised by the White House, it was a brief one. Mr. Bush allowed 5 to 10 minutes this morning for interchange with the group - which included three veterans of another difficult war, the one in Vietnam: Robert S. McNamara, Melvin R. Laird and James R. Schlesinger. Then the entire group was herded the Oval Office for what he called a "family picture."
Those who wanted to impart more wisdom to the current occupants of the White House were sent back across the hall to meet again with Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. But, as several of the participants noted, by that time Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had gone on to other meetings.
So.
We're getting into year three of this war, and Bush allows five to ten minutes - I'll say that again- five to ten minutes to "listen" to advice from former secretaries of state and defense, a group that predates Poppy's Presidency, which he is supposedly going to "take to heart."
Then, he and his fellow eels sneak out of the room.
When cameras were in the room, though, Mr. Bush was appreciative. "I'm most grateful for the suggestions that have been given," he said. "We take the advice, we appreciate your experience and we appreciate you taking the time out of your day."
How fucking condescending. As Tbogg says, let's just call it what it was- a photo op.
After the meeting, Mr. Laird, a defense secretary under President Richard M. Nixon, told reporters that Mr. Bush "heard some things he did not like, he heard some things he did like."
"That's the kind of meeting you want," he said, according to The Associated Press.
Oh, you're calling that a meeting. I see. Ten minutes to listen to 13 officials. Giving each person less than a minute to get their point across to the Boy King. And that's not even taking into account the amount of time they had to spend grimacing and laughing weakly to one of Bush's "Heh-heh-heh" jokes.'
He heard some things he liked, and some things he didn't like? I'm amazed he had time.
(Oh, cross-post, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind)
My Friends... a Prediction....
Allow me to gaze into my crystal ball....
With Ariel Sharon's health failing, and the outlook looking grim, I predict...
If Sharon does not recover, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, or one of their ilk will joke about Liberals "rushing gleefully to pull his feeding tube."
Remember my friends, future events such as these... will affect you in the future.
(And Pat Robertson is still a douchebag.)
(Inspector Clay is dead... murdered... and some cross-post is responsible!)
Question of the Day
Let’s say that, after his big Oscar gig, Jon Stewart is tapped to replace Conan at Late Night when he moves over to The Tonight Show (whenever that blissful day comes), and so there’s a search on for a new host of The Daily Show. And let’s say that, in sticking with tradition, they look for someone outside the show to host, rather than promoting one of the correspondents. Who would you pick as Jon’s heir?
I’d probably go with Sacha Baron Cohen, otherwise known as Ali G.
Profoundly Harmful
David Neiwert’s got a great new post, continuing the debunking of Malkin’s Unhinged and conservative eliminationist rhetoric. Just a day after I went off on one about the marginalization of liberals, and recommended that those who hold progressives in contempt ought to thank a progressive for that particular luxury, Neiwert notes something very important about allowing a steady stream of rightwing vitriol against liberals to continue unabated:
The problem with this silence is that the left has done little to actually counter right-wing hatemongers like Limbaugh and Michael Savage and their thousand little imitators, giving them an open field in which to demonize mainstream liberalism -- which, if you listen to them at all, is what they do. As I've remarked previously, the effect of this sustained attack is most pronounced in rural America, where these radio talkers simply assail urban liberals on the air 24 hours a day, seven days a week.If that doesn’t speak to you in some way, consider yourself very lucky. It certainly speaks to me, though my personal experience with the residual effects of how those who listen to rightwing hatemongering regard liberals is something that I don’t write about, and probably never will. But it’s one of many reasons why this issue is important to me, not least of which is, as Neill said in comments, “In a powerful sense, leftism is Americanism.”
Much of this, as I've also explained, is deeply personal stuff. Liberals, over the past 15 years, have been regularly portrayed as being out to lunch, uncaring and hostile to mainstream and rural values, and unpatriotic traitors. Deeply patriotic, hard-working, family-oriented liberals have been having their characters assaulted relentlessly before their neighbors and friends. It affects family relationships, old friendships, and our deeper ties to our communities in profoundly harmful ways.
I’m Mad at You Just Because I Know Who You Are
Not Tom Cruise, or even Katie Holmes, but their merged, two-headed demonic being known as “TomKat,” from whence will soon spring its satanic, I mean Scientologic, spawn.
The Scoop reports, however, that the wedding may be off. (“Yeah right,” sniffs my favorite dish bitch, Michael K, “over Tom Cruise's dead alien body!”) Eh, what does L. Tom Hubbard care? He’s got his extraterrestrial heir and even his insane-a-thon on Oprah’s chatfest couldn’t unseat him as Hollywood’s top money-maker (for the seventh time). He and his evil turkey-basted legatee will soon rule the world, whether Joey Potter’s along for the ride or not.
Hmm
Regarding the question of whether CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was being spied on, Fix at Alternate Brain notes:
How much you wanna bet we find they've been spying on the Democrats, namely the Kerry campaign last year? It's just conjecture on my part, so far, but I feel comfortable making the prediction.He ought to. Amanpour's husband is ex-State Dept. spokesperson and Kerry campaign adviser Jamie Rubin. If they were spying on Amanpour, it certainly seems almost unavoidable that they were spying on the Kerry campaign.
As Bill Safire noted on Meet the Press, discussing his own experience with having been wiretapped:
I was writing a speech on welfare reform, and the president looks at it and says, "OK, I'll go with it, but this is not going to get covered. Leak it as far an wide as you can beforehand. Maybe we'll get something in the paper." And so I go back to my office and I get a call from a reporter, and he wants to know about foreign affairs or something, and I said, "Hey, you want a leak? I'll tell you what the president will say tomorrow about welfare reform." And he took it down and wrote a little story about it. But the FBI was illegally tapping his phone at the time, and so they hear a White House speechwriter say, "Hey, you want a leak?" And so they tapped my phone, and for six months, every home phone call I got was tapped. I didn't like that. And when it finally broke--it did me a lot of good at the time, frankly, because then I was on the right side--but it told me how easy it was to just take somebody who is not really suspected of anything for any good reason and listen to every conversation in his home--you know, my wife talking to her doctor, my--everything.Just a thought.
Random Notes
Bush is giving up $6,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff—Even though Abramoff raised more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. Wev. Bush is donating it to the American Heart Association. He ought to just save a step and give it directly to Cheney.
Bush Listens to Suggestions on Iraq—What a charming acquiescence. File this under “Turd Blossom’s best idea to dispel the increasingly wide-held notion that Bush has become Supreme Dictator of the Americas.”
Democrats aren’t planning to filibuster Alito—Of course they’re not.
Sharon is on his deathbed—Good innings, though, for the old hawk who I never particularly liked.
Sole mine survivor is in a coma—He’s critically ill; has liver and kidney damage, for a start. There isn’t sufficient punishment for the cretins who didn’t care about the safety of these workers.
A new German documentary says Cuba paid Oswald to kill JFK—And this just in: I don’t care. I’m stuck with a president who’s life needs some serious investigation at the moment.
Queen Latifah gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—I love the Queen. I think I’m going to put a star for her on my driveway.
Secretive Military Unit Attempted to Solve Political Problems in Iraq
Raw Story is reporting that the Pentagon civilian leadership “may have used an off-book quasi-military team to address political issues” in Iraq, including locating fallen Navy pilot Scott Speicher, who Ahmed Chalabi claimed had been held as a POW in Iraq since 1991, unearthing WMD, and finding Saddam Hussein, and that these concerns were given a higher priority than securing the region.
Read the whole thing, but of particular interest to me is the claim that on of these “off-book” missions was tasked with finding WMDs to solve the president’s political problems regarding his case for war—and was allegedly asking Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers to help them plant something, since there was nothing to be found.
“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”This is, of course, not the first time it has been suggested that the White House tried to arrange to have WMDs planted. One theory asserts that the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, who was working on weapons proliferation, was not just a reprisal for her husband’s Times column, but a retaliatory tactic for having uncovered attempts to plant WMDs.
The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.
“But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,” the source added.
Hoosier Hatin’
Pam takes on a Hoosier homobigot, and once again incisively knocks down the inane arguments of someone offended by the conflation of minority rights and gay rights. In response to the idiot claim, “To compare the plight of homosexuals to that of African Americans is an insult to my race,” Pam retorts:
How about she is an insult to my "race"? What about all of the LGBT people of color -- how do they fit into her argument? It's the same old, same old -- being gay is the "white man's perversion" and for someone like Torkwase Adande, civil rights are some sort of zero sum game where protections for gays are somehow going to have an impact on the rights she has gained.And let me just add, on behalf of progressive Hoosiers (a small contingent though we may be), that Jocelyn-Tandy Torkwase Adande is an insult to us, too. Luckily, Pam’s got some IndyStar letters to the editor that illustrate not everyone in this sorry state is as hateful (or ignorant) as she is.
To see these kinds of comments over and over is just sad. It's the reason why there is going to be a conference dealing directly with homophobia in the black community this month in Atlanta. It is sorely needed.
Pastoring to Police
Because every stressed-out cop needs a good hummer sermon:
A pastor who has spoken out against homosexuality was arrested after propositioning a male undercover police officer outside a hotel, authorities said.The good reverend, who was charged with “offering to engage in an act of lewdness,” is not just a small-town Oklahoma minister, but is, in fact, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee.
As the Rev. Lonnie Latham, 59, left jail Wednesday, he said “I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police.”
Latham has supported a convention directive urging members to befriend gays and lesbians and try to convince them that they can become heterosexual “if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and reject their 'sinful, destructive lifestyle.'”Befriend…blow…it’s easy to get confused.
Repeat Rapist Sentenced to 60 Days in Jail
After Mark Hulett pled guilty to repeatedly raping a girl for four years, starting when she was 7 years old (6 by another report), the judge tasked with his sentencing handed down only a 60-day sentence, to be followed by compulsory sex treatment, saying he no longer believes that punishment works.
"The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul," said Judge Edward Cashman speaking to a packed Burlington [Vermont] courtroom…Needless to say, the family of the victim were outraged, as were the prosecutors, who were seeking a a sentence of eight to twenty years in prison, not a two-month stint in the local clink.
Judge Cashman also also revealed that he once handed down stiff sentences when he first got on the bench 25 years ago, but he no longer believes in punishment.
"I discovered it accomplishes nothing of value; it doesn't make anything better; it costs us a lot of money; we create a lot of expectation, and we feed on anger," Cashman explained to the people in the court.
I’m pretty outraged, too. I think the judge is dead wrong; sex offenders have a high recidivism rate, even with rehabilitation. If he were seeking treatment on behalf of a substance abuser, it would be a totally different story, but sending a child rapist for finite treatment and then letting him go is tantamount to tacitly endorsing his further abuse of children. That said, my outrage isn’t directed predominantly at the judge.
Judge Cashman explained that he is more concerned that Hulett receive sex offender treatment as rehabilitation. But under Department of Corrections classification, Hulett is considered a low-risk for re-offense so he does not qualify for in-prison treatment. So the judge sentenced him to just 60 days in prison and then Hulett must complete sex treatment when he gets out or face a possible life sentence.In other words, the Department of Corrections tied the hands of any judge who would have wanted to include rehabilitation as part of Hulett’s sentencing. And while I find it highly objectionable that a judge would endorse treatment over prison time for a child rapist, I find it more objectionable that the Department of Corrections made it an either-or scenario in the first place. What the hell kind of bullshit classifications system do they have, that someone who’s spent three years repeatedly raping a child is considered “low-risk” for re-offending? That’s completely absurd, and indicative of such a grave misunderstanding of sex offenders that it defies comprehension.
If rehabilitation is going to be made available for sex offenders, I can’t imagine why this piece of shit doesn’t qualify. It certainly raises some serious questions about how victims of sex abuse are valued, or, perhaps more accurately, not valued.
