Category: Rants

American Carnage: 17-Nov-17

The Diddler’s Club

What we learned this week:

• Al Franken is the latest member of the “People Who Diddled People Who Didn’t Want to be Diddled” Club. This Diddlers Club, of which we’re all so very proud, officially now consists of the nation’s President; at least two former presidents; two or three sitting United States Senators and lord knows how many more; a Supreme Court Justice; god knows how many Members of the House of Representatives and their staffs; governors of various states; members of various state legislatures, including a member in Ohio who was exercising his member with another man’s member, cheating on his wife as he attempted to pass virulently anti-LGBTQ legislation; the impeached Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who may become a United States Senator next month; journalists of various stripes; sports figures and commentators; Catholic priests and Protestant preachers; college professors; doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs and at least one family member. It’s quite a roster, very inclusive.

• In other words, we learned what women have been trying to tell us about the lives they have to lead because they have something every heteronormative man seems to badly want: a vagina. Also some men, because they have what every homonormative man wants: a penis.

• What’s the matter with Kansas? The hypersecretive autocratic government which took power over the last ten years operates incompetently and in «extremely secretive, weird ways».

• I missed this back in September, but one acolyte of “Christian” nutbag autocratic Bill Gothard, who has platinum status in the Diddler’s Club (and he’s in his eighties) is in trouble in Arkansas. «Kenneth L. Dewitt applied Gothard’s principles of Godly behavior while running a prison ministry for imprisoned Arkansas women. The Godly principle apparently involved Dewitt having incarcerated women come in under his “umbrella of authority” and submit to God’s plan for women: repeated diddling because … men. Dewitt is “is currently serving a five-year sentence at the Ouachita River Unit after pleading guilty to multiple charges of sexual assault of prisoners.” Gothard couldn’t be reached for comment; he was probably unreachable in a private jet giving private dictation to one of the shapely arrows in his Quiver.

• If you don’t recall the sordid details of Reality TV stars The Duggars, who were Gothard’s proudest achievement and America’s favorite voyeuristic targets (19 blond white kids, what’s not to like?!), «here’s a link from 2015 that pretty well explains the entire wreckage of Gothard’s slimy trail, stretching back to the 1950s. [Full disclosure: My parents ponied up to pay for me to go to a Gothard Basic Seminar and an Advanced Seminar back in high school. Family members have been fully involved in the “ministry” and continue to angrily defend the old goat even now that’s he’s been sued by, what, 30 or so?, abused men and diddled women. IF we were still talking to each other and IF I was masochistic enough to be there for Thanksgiving dinner, Gothard would be a topic that would have to be avoided ere blood was shed on the turkey carcass. /End disclosure.]

• One more piece of recent Gothard news: IBLP, Gothard’s “former” ministry from which he has disassociated with just like Trump, cachinged last month on the sale of a property they owned in Australia. «They scored $9.5 million U.S. dollars on a property valued at just $6 million». And they won’t even have to practice the usual offshore tax haven chicanery to avoid a hefty tax bill; they’re an American “church” and therefore exempt from taxation. Maybe they’ll have a come-to-Jesus moment and repent and spread the money among Gothard’s Diddlers Club targets. Right after the Holy Spirit heeds their prayers and pigs fly from Melbourne to Los Angeles. Aside: I love how the Aussie press just tells it like it is in this case: “US religious cult.” You have NO idea, my Aussie friends!

• I said only one more Gothard piece. I lied. There’s an article in The New Republic that discusses the … politics and peccadilloes, shall we say … of Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame. I mention it because Gothardites and other similar evangelical fellow travelers have always had a very weird (at least to me) fetish for the 19th century, and their worship of Wilder and Little House is repeated in a million ways over everything from Gunsmoke and John Wayne to learning how to cook like pioneer women. Some of them even submit to the kind of abuse meted out by 19th century husbands, but that’s a different paragraph. «Little House, Small Government» is a nice starter primer to this phenomenon, although it’s sadly too short to be able to explore the evangelical connection or the fetishization of dying on the Oregon Trail.

• Turning to more uplifting in the face of bigotry, abuse and violence news, there’s a fascinating account in a publication I’d never read called Emergency Physician’s Monthly. «It’s the story of what happened to one hospital’s ER team the night the NRA slaughtered some folks» listening to what now passes for “country” music. It’s a highly recommended read, as are the other articles on the site.

• Speaking of the wild frontier, the usually lily-white Outside magazine actually printed «a lament from a young man who went west» to work some seasonal jobs at Montana resorts. Why did he not have a great season? His skin color wasn’t up to snuff. (Which of course meant he worked in “housekeeping.”) The article explores his experience with the casual “lighten up” (har har, get it?) type of racism from coworkers and guests which finally wore him down and sent him packing back east to relative safety. Remarkably, his white coworkers calling each other “ni—-s” as a “joke” was about the worst that happened to him. It’s amazing he wasn’t shot or jailed; it’s even more amazing that Outside printed the report. I grieve for his loss of innocence, and hope he has all the success in life he wants. I’d also like to shake his hand; he’s braver than I.

• Closing with one Diddlers Club story that’s so fun. Ohio state rep. Wes Goodman, family values warrior and, of course, Republican, resigned his seat after he was caught using his state office for some consensual diddling with a person who was not his wife and not a woman. Yes, yet another one of those “Fags must die! If you agree, meet me in my car at the local park for some cocksucking followed by the signing of a petition demanding the death penalty for fag kissing!” kind of people, as usual, hoisted on his own petard, or his boyfriend’s whatever. As someone quipped on Twitter, “Goodman’s wife is probably so pissed, he’s having to move into a log cabin!” (Get it? Log Cabin Republicans are the gay ones who haven’t figured out yet that they support a party which has members who seriously, sincerely, would go Leviticus on their gay, rich asses given half a chance. Goodman’s website has been scrubbed today; but the good old friend, the Wayback Machine, is providing nice clear copies of things the good man has written. Unfortunately, his Twitter account has been locked down, but that’s not a barrier either. Here’s Wes’ priceless take on the Family: “Healthy, vibrant, thriving, values-driven families are the source of Ohio’s proud history and the key to Ohio’s future greatness. The ideals of a loving father and mother, a committed natural marriage, and a caring community are well worth pursuing and protecting.” Oh, how fun. Don’t you love closet cases who talk about “vibrant, thriving” committed natural marriages when the only thing that’s actually “vibrant and thriving” is their relationship to their boyfriends’ cocks? Little Wes is a cutie. He and Aaron Schock, if that old gym queen manages to avoid prison, should totally get together. They’d make a truly hot, power Log Cabin Republican partnership. I hope Wes is a bottom, ’cause I doubt Aaron lets just anyone go balls-deep on his bleached ass.

• And, oh yeah, there was another NRA nutbag gun attack. It is now officially news if a mass shooting does NOT occur on any given day.

So, ain’t our America nation grand? After reading all this stuff (and then writing about it) I feel extremely … greasy. Like the country has gone much bukkake all over my gay face. I need a bath and some penicillin. And this country is 100%, pure Grade A, psycho nuts insane, from the demented consummate con man in the White House to … well just about everyone else. Not at ALL what I thought living in the U.S. during my middle age would be like. Can’t wait to become elderly. ‘Cause that shit is also seriously fucked up in major ways too.

Good night, y’all.

[Text by HawkEye. Photo by Vlad Tchompalov via Unsplash.]

American Carnage: 10-Nov-17

Peckerwoods!

What we learned this week:

• Comedian Louis CK and Crusading Crazy Ass Roy Moore were accepted into that venerable old boy’s club, that newly-open-to-didlers-from-outside-the-church institution, The Ancient and Venerable Order of Priests Expecting Complete, Knightly Exoneration; Rewarded With Oodles Of Dancing Students (a.k.a. “P.E.C.K.E.R.W.O.O.D.S.”) Golf and Country Club. Greeting them at the door was the Ancient and Venerable Third Assistant Vice President Clarence Thomas, who treated the new initiates to pubic hair-laced Coke cans and asked Roy Moore if Moore was interested in buying him, because living conditions in “free” Washington D.C., are highly overrated.

• Corey Feldman is still alive. And also Corey Feldman knows lots of Hollywood people who will be applying for membership at Peckerwoods G&CC very soon. This has Corey quite frightened.

• 150-year-old former presidents need help to take a piss, but are still able to feel up female reporters and tell them dirty jokes, both of which are done in front of former First Ladies.

• White gay men are no longer welcome in the gay rights movement because the whiteness of their skin means they are privileged, cisgendered and non-intersectional. Henceforward, when we’re getting the shit beaten out of us at school; can’t afford college; get harassed or beaten or shot by the police for kissing our boyfriends in public parks; gulp down the handful of toxic drugs we fought to get in the 90s while watching our mothers scour the kitchen sink after getting a glass of water lest God’s disapproval in the form of the AIDS plague will be visited on her house and infect her innocent grandchildren; spending the 54th year of life with our families berating us for our lifestyle choice and allowing demons to inhabit our bodies; well, we cannot possibly have any contribution or role in the LGBTQ community. Because our skin color is white. And that means we cannot participate, question, discuss, converse and sure as hell can’t culturally appropriate anything from anybody. No alliances with us are welcome. No matter how many suicide attempts we committed during our teen years because we are total fags, it counts for nothing. You must be black, female, lesbian, transgendered before you are allowed to participate in efforts to secure civil rights for LGBTQ, etc. Your skin color is white, so you must be a white supremacist Nazi dedicated to keeping people of color down. “Intersectionality is a bitch, white boys; paybacks are hell and Karma gonna bite you in your lily white highly privileged asses.”

• That Kathy Griffin is a bit off her nut though, isn’t she?

• John Hillerman is dead at 84. Yet, Justin Bieber and Joel Osteen still walk the earth. Osteen’s Mercedes-bestowing god sure has a wicked sense of humor.

• There seems to have been some baseball played. Something about a World Series won by perennially losers the Houston Astros. We wouldn’t know, we weren’t paying attention.

• New England Patriots player and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez’s brain was dissected and shown to be the worst case of NFL of the brain ever recorded. Oh, this just in, it was CTE of the brain. We regret (not) the error.

• O.J. Simpson will continue to haunt our lives even if he actually dies. This week: Tossed out of the Cosmopolitan in Vegas for being … the only intoxicated person in the casino. The Juice owes the Cosmo a favor; that place is a cesspool of skeezy. Getting banned from it for life probably will save his life (or perhaps a few courses of penicillin). We were at the Vdara/Cosmo complex in 2014. The swimming pool still gives me nightmares. And hives.

• They’re remaking/updating/relaunching a lot of old 90s TV series for no apparent reason than, like the Simpsons, the creative well in Hollywood dried up decades ago, probably about the time Carol Burnett packed it in on her variety show, which was was always packed with incredible talent. A Roseanne reboot and a Will and Grace reboot we did not need. Also, The Simpsons must die; each episode is worse than the previous, a race to a bottom we cannot make out but we know it’s there. Family Guy is suffering while its creator is buzzing around the universe, so it’s probably also time that James Woods whips out his AR-15 and ends the show’s life for good and all as well. Bobs Burgers is still reasonably fresh, but it may be peaking now. (And by the way, just ’cause I’m a white faggot does NOT mean I should have to watch the Will and Grace reboot. My intersectionality about class, wealth, New York City snobbery and poor body image means this show deeply oppresses me, even if it may have influenced some people decide not to shoot our faggoty white asses when we got legally married by the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever may be, I’d still prefer old Lucy Show episodes to most of this dreck.

• Tuesday’s election seemed to be a case of buyer’s remorse, wherein the guy who bought a pink Ford Fiesta with the undercoating package and Scotch-guarded seats wakes up after a long nightmare and wants to toss the Pink Fiesta off the nearest cliff, but knows there’s just no way that’s going to happen. So instead, he settles for going to the nearest Ben and Jerry’s and consuming 23 different punny flavors, coincidentally imbibing enough “RoundUp” (TM) to shrivel his gonads to the size of B.B.s And while waiting for his blood glucose numbers to fall below 1000, stares at the Pink Fiesta and thinks, “I hate this fucking century and this fucking country and powerful people who diddle powerless people and get away with it. Every. Single. Time.” And then, feeling better and on the way home, the wheels on his pink Fiesta fall off for the 45th time that week.

• Speaking of Pink Fiestas, the anniversary of Trump’s ascendance to power is appropriately the same as Kristallnacht and the infamous “Stab in the Back,” whereby leftists and Jews back home knifed German troops on the Western Front in the back just right when they were about to end the whole damn war victoriously, causing the Kaiser to abdicate and the nation to find itself in need of rescuing by an Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler. Putting the facetiousness aside for a moment, the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht should be looked upon as an abject lesson about what happens when you allow hate, ignorance, false equivalency, and frat boy snark mindsets to take over entire countries. But that would require Americans to actually absorb reality and study history, two things we are adamantly refusing to do at this moment. Gott Strafe Amerika! And he’ll do it too.

[Text by HawkEye. Photo by Dawn Armfield via Unsplash.]

The Own Us

It’s all a sordid mess and they need to be yanked hard.

Take Back Our Voter Data

The CBC « reports on Professor David Carroll » and the fight to get Cambridge Analytical to tell us what is in our “psychographical” profiles. It’s all a sordid mess and they need to be yanked hard.

“They claim to have figured out how to project our voting behavior based on our consumer behavior. So it’s important for citizens to be able to understand this because it would affect our ability to understand how we’re being targeted by campaigns and how the messages that we’re seeing on Facebook and television are being directed at us to manipulate us.”

—CBC Canada

Nothing will happen here, though; these people gave us the current government and our legislatures are not on our side.

But you can be on Prof. Carroll’s side by « following his Twitter feed » or support his « Crowd Justice pledge » to “take back our voter data.”

To the Editor, Part Deux

In which we in the future answer “Letters to the Editor” of the Chicago Tribune written during the past that was called World War Two.

“Globaloney Stamps.
“Chicago, June 1. — Totay I received the shock of my life when I went to mail a package to my boy in service. I needed 20 cents in stamps and was given four 5 cent stamps with the red flag of Albania spread almost across the entire surface. Just what is this country coming to?
“Mrs. H.V.”
—Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10

Methinks I smells the grandmother of a future Trump supporter!

Actually, “Mrs. H.V.”, on 6-June-1944, “what this country had come to” was the liberation of the European continent from Nazism and Fascism, which it did along with 22 other nations (hence the term “Allies”) and an “associated power,” Albania, which at the time of your “Letter to the Editor” was occupied by forces of the German Wehrmacht.

By the way, Albania’s designation as an associated power was formally recognized at the 1946 Paris conference. Albania officially signed the treaty ending World War II between the “Allied and Associated Powers” and Italy in Paris, on 10 February 1947. Albania had been occupied by Fascist Italy then Germany; it was quickly subjugated to communist party rule and suffered under Enver Hoxha for the next five decades.

Finally, “what this country had come to” on D-Day 1944 was to recognize on a five-cent postage stamp that it wasn’t winning the war alone, was not in the war alone, and was not suffering in the war alone.

I hope your “boy in the service” was able to hold on to his U.S. Postal Service five-cent Albanian flag stamps. They’s probably worth some moneys today. [And thank him for his service.]

“Four More Years of War
“Mankato, Minn., June 1.—I wonder how many people now earning big money, more money thant they have ever handled before, and who will vote a certain way thinking to insure a continuation of this income, ever pause to think what another four years will bring?
“Among the many unpleasant things that are to me a foregone conclusion is that Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he? It is the perfect solution of unemployment, a problem he failed to solve until we managed to become embroiled in war. Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.
“He has a mania for spending and giving and war allows him privileges which peace would curtail, we hope. So, I say vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.
“Reader”
—Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10

Is that you, Erle P. Halliburton? No? Are you Fred Drumpf? Ah! I suspected so. It’s the 1944 version of a Twitter storm (ask your son, he’ll explain).

Where to start, where to start.

1. “What will another four years bring?” Oh, honey, you have no idea. You should just suspend time and stay safe and quiet in 1944, baby. You don’t really wanna know the answers to this question. Lessee. Hitler? Dead. Mussolini? Hangs lifelessly from a lamp post. Tojo? Incompletely suicides, resurrects, then is executed. Roosevelt? Dead. A National Security State is born. We have to start hand-feeding everyone in Berlin. Truman gets pissed over a negative review of one of his daughter’s piano recitals. We fuck up in Korea causing … some very bad shit to be set into perpetual motion. China turns red. Japan turns black, largely from just two very large bombs. Lots of soldiers come back from all points of the globe and take your job, discontinuing your own income.

2. “… Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he?” The war will continue for one year and three more months. Roosevelt won’t drag the war out because he’ll be dead in ten months.

3. “… unemployment, a problem he failed to solve …” Unemployment was nearly 25% in 1933 when Roosevelt took office; in 1941 it had fallen to 10%; and when he died in 1945, economists considered the country at “full employment,” with less than 2% of the nation’s workforce unemployed. You’re just being deliberately idiotic here, my friend.

4. “… until we managed to become embroiled in war.” The United States was not attacked by Franklin Roosevelt; war was declared by the Empire of Japan on 7-December-1941 with the launching of a surprise attack on military installations near Honolulu, Hawaii. War on the United States was declared by Germany the next day. The United States Congress “embroiled” us in the war by declaring war in Public Law 77-328, 55 STAT 795 on 8-Dec-1941. After Germany declared war on the U.S., the Congress reacted with a declaration of war on Germany in Pub. Law 77–331, Sess. 1, ch. 564, 55 Stat. 796. The “embroiling” would seem to be, then, a joint act of Japan, Germany and the United States Congress, the parties with power to declare, embroil and conduct warfare.

5. “Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.” Dear “Reader,” am I to extrapolate from this sentence that you wish to conduct the most massive conflict in human history involving most of the peoples and locations of the planet, the object of certain parties (see #4 above) being to destroy the United States and dozens of other countries … that you wish to conduct this war “on the cheap”? The Congress has appropriated funds necessary to forestall the aim of aforementioned parties and it is the duty of the President to use those funds to defend the country to the utmost against, again, parties which wish us destroyed. And you’re taking exception? Oh, sweetie, wait until a certain actor whom you’ve seen in “Bedtime for Bonzo” seizes the presidency and spends over $700 a piece for hammers for the armed forces, which will partially explain trillion-dollar-deficits. Then we’ll get back to you and ask your opinion. Surely we can count on that opinion being, shall we say, apoplectic? Or is it just Mr. Roosevelt who gets under your skin? Enquiring minds wish to know.

6. “… vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.” A vote in November 1944 six months hence will, dear “Reader,” get you nine more months, not years, of war, and just about one month of a Roosevelt fourth term.

So buck up, dear “Reader”! The end is nigh. Now go sit by the radio and let General Eisenhower entertain you with tales from a place called Omaha Beach. And then write back and tell us how much money you would have allocated to the D-Day Invasion of German-occupied Europe, the largest military invasion in human history. Give us a hint. $100,000? $200,000? Can’t wait for your fascinating reply!

To the Editor (2017)

In which we in the future answer “Letters to the Editor” of the Chicago Tribune written during the past that was called World War Two.

“Globaloney Stamps.
“Chicago, June 1. — Today I received the shock of my life when I went to mail a package to my boy in service. I needed 20 cents in stamps and was given four 5 cent stamps with the red flag of Albania spread almost across the entire surface. Just what is this country coming to?
“Mrs. H.V.”
—Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10”

Methinks I smells the grandmother of a future Trump supporter!

Actually, “Mrs. H.V.”, on 6-June-1944, “what this country had come to” was the liberation of the European continent from Nazism and Fascism, which it did along with 22 other nations (hence the term “Allies”) and an “associated power,” Albania, which at the time of your “Letter to the Editor” was occupied by forces of the German Wehrmacht.

By the way, Albania’s designation as an associated power was formally recognized at the 1946 Paris conference. Albania officially signed the treaty ending World War II between the “Allied and Associated Powers” and Italy in Paris, on 10 February 1947. Albania had been occupied by Fascist Italy then Germany; it was quickly subjugated to communist party rule and suffered under Enver Hoxha for the next five decades.

Finally, “what this country had come to” on D-Day 1944 was to recognize on a five-cent postage stamp that it wasn’t winning the war alone, was not in the war alone, and was not suffering in the war alone.

I hope your “boy in the service” was able to hold on to his U.S. Postal Service five-cent Albanian flag stamps. They’s probably worth some moneys today. [And thank him for his service.]

“Four More Years of War
“Mankato, Minn., June 1. — I wonder how many people now earning big money, more money thant they have ever handled before, and who will vote a certain way thinking to insure a continuation of this income, ever pause to think what another four years will bring?
“Among the many unpleasant things that are to me a foregone conclusion is that Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he? It is the perfect solution of unemployment, a problem he failed to solve until we managed to become embroiled in war. Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.
“He has a mania for spending and giving and war allows him privileges which peace would curtail, we hope. So, I say vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.
“Reader”
—Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10

Is that you, Erle P. Halliburton? No? Are you Fred Drumpf? Ah! I suspected so. It’s the 1944 version of a Twitter storm (ask your son, he’ll explain).

Where to start, where to start.

1. “What will another four years bring?” Oh, honey, you have no idea. You should just suspend time and stay safe and quiet in 1944, baby. You don’t really wanna know the answers to this question. Lessee. Hitler? Dead. Mussolini? Hangs lifelessly from a lamp post. Tojo? Incompletely suicides, resurrects, then is executed. Roosevelt? Dead. A National Security State is born. We have to start hand-feeding everyone in Berlin. Truman gets pissed over a negative review of one of his daughter’s piano recitals. We fuck up in Korea causing … some very bad shit to be set into perpetual motion. China turns red. Japan turns black, largely from just two very large bombs. Lots of soldiers come back from all points of the globe and take your job, discontinuing your own income.

2. “… Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he?” The war will continue for one year and three more months. Roosevelt won’t drag the war out because he’ll be dead in ten months.

3. “… unemployment, a problem he failed to solve …” Unemployment was nearly 25% in 1933 when Roosevelt took office; in 1941 it had fallen to 10%; and when he died in 1945, economists considered the country at “full employment,” with less than 2% of the nation’s workforce unemployed. You’re just being deliberately idiotic here, my friend.

4. “… until we managed to become embroiled in war.” The United States was not attacked by Franklin Roosevelt; war was declared by the Empire of Japan on 7-December-1941 with the launching of a surprise attack on military installations near Honolulu, Hawaii. War on the United States was declared by Germany the next day. The United States Congress “embroiled” us in the war by declaring war in Public Law 77-328, 55 STAT 795 on 8-Dec-1941. After Germany declared war on the U.S., the Congress reacted with a declaration of war on Germany in Pub. Law 77–331, Sess. 1, ch. 564, 55 Stat. 796. The “embroiling” would seem to be, then, a joint act of Japan, Germany and the United States Congress, the parties with power to declare, embroil and conduct warfare.

5. “Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.” Dear “Reader,” am I to extrapolate from this sentence that you wish to conduct the most massive conflict in human history involving most of the peoples and locations of the planet, the object of certain parties (see #4 above) being to destroy the United States and dozens of other countries … that you wish to conduct this war “on the cheap”? The Congress has appropriated funds necessary to forestall the aim of aforementioned parties and it is the duty of the President to use those funds to defend the country to the utmost against, again, parties which wish us destroyed. And you’re taking exception? Oh, sweetie, wait until a certain actor whom you’ve seen in “Bedtime for Bonzo” seizes the presidency and spends over $700 a piece for hammers for the armed forces, which will partially explain trillion-dollar-deficits. Then we’ll get back to you and ask your opinion. Surely we can count on that opinion being, shall we say, apoplectic? Or is it just Mr. Roosevelt who gets under your skin? Enquiring minds wish to know.

6. “… vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.” A vote in November 1944 six months hence will, dear “Reader,” get you nine more months, not years, of war, and just about one month of a Roosevelt fourth term.

So buck up, dear “Reader”! The end is nigh. Now go sit by the radio and let General Eisenhower entertain you with tales from a place called Omaha Beach. And then write back and tell us how much money you would have allocated to the D-Day Invasion of German-occupied Europe, the largest military invasion in human history. Give us a hint. $100,000? $200,000? Can’t wait for your fascinating reply!

To the Editor

In which we in the future answer “Letters to the Editor” of the Chicago Tribune written during the past that was called World War Two.

“Globaloney Stamps.
“Chicago, June 1. — Today I received the shock of my life when I went to mail a package to my boy in service. I needed 20 cents in stamps and was given four 5 cent stamps with the red flag of Albania spread almost across the entire surface. Just what is this country coming to?
“Mrs. H.V.”
—Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10

Methinks I smells the grandmother of a future Trump supporter!

Actually, “Mrs. H.V.”, on 6-June-1944, “what this country had come to” was the liberation of the European continent from Nazism and Fascism, which it did along with 22 other nations (hence the term “Allies”) and an “associated power,” Albania, which at the time of your “Letter to the Editor” was occupied by forces of the German Wehrmacht.

By the way, Albania’s designation as an associated power was formally recognized at the 1946 Paris conference. Albania officially signed the treaty ending World War II between the “Allied and Associated Powers” and Italy in Paris, on 10 February 1947. Albania had been occupied by Fascist Italy then Germany; it was quickly subjugated to communist party rule and suffered under Enver Hoxha for the next five decades.

Finally, “what this country had come to” on D-Day 1944 was to recognize on a five-cent postage stamp that it wasn’t winning the war alone, was not in the war alone, and was not suffering in the war alone.

I hope your “boy in the service” was able to hold on to his U.S. Postal Service five-cent Albanian flag stamps. They’s probably worth some moneys today. [And thank him for his service.]

“Four More Years of War
“Mankato, Minn., June 1. — I wonder how many people now earning big money, more money thant they have ever handled before, and who will vote a certain way thinking to insure a continuation of this income, ever pause to think what another four years will bring?
“Among the many unpleasant things that are to me a foregone conclusion is that Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he? It is the perfect solution of unemployment, a problem he failed to solve until we managed to become embroiled in war. Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.
“He has a mania for spending and giving and war allows him privileges which peace would curtail, we hope. So, I say vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.
“Reader”
—Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10

Is that you, Erle P. Halliburton? No? Are you Fred Drumpf? Ah! I suspected so. It’s the 1944 version of a Twitter storm (ask your son, he’ll explain).

Where to start, where to start.

1. “What will another four years bring?” Oh, honey, you have no idea. You should just suspend time and stay safe and quiet in 1944, baby. You don’t really wanna know the answers to this question. Lessee. Hitler? Dead. Mussolini? Hangs lifelessly from a lamp post. Tojo? Incompletely suicides, resurrects, then is executed. Roosevelt? Dead. A National Security State is born. We have to start hand-feeding everyone in Berlin. Truman gets pissed over a negative review of one of his daughter’s piano recitals. We fuck up in Korea causing … some very bad shit to be set into perpetual motion. China turns red. Japan turns black, largely from just two very large bombs. Lots of soldiers come back from all points of the globe and take your job, discontinuing your own income.

2. “… Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he?” The war will continue for one year and three more months. Roosevelt won’t drag the war out because he’ll be dead in ten months.

3. “… unemployment, a problem he failed to solve …” Unemployment was nearly 25% in 1933 when Roosevelt took office; in 1941 it had fallen to 10%; and when he died in 1945, economists considered the country at “full employment,” with less than 2% of the nation’s workforce unemployed. You’re just being deliberately idiotic here, my friend.

4. “… until we managed to become embroiled in war.” The United States was not attacked by Franklin Roosevelt; war was declared by the Empire of Japan on 7-December-1941 with the launching of a surprise attack on military installations near Honolulu, Hawaii. War on the United States was declared by Germany the next day. The United States Congress “embroiled” us in the war by declaring war in Public Law 77-328, 55 STAT 795 on 8-Dec-1941. After Germany declared war on the U.S., the Congress reacted with a declaration of war on Germany in Pub. Law 77–331, Sess. 1, ch. 564, 55 Stat. 796. The “embroiling” would seem to be, then, a joint act of Japan, Germany and the United States Congress, the parties with power to declare, embroil and conduct warfare.

5. “Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.” Dear “Reader,” am I to extrapolate from this sentence that you wish to conduct the most massive conflict in human history involving most of the peoples and locations of the planet, the object of certain parties (see #4 above) being to destroy the United States and dozens of other countries … that you wish to conduct this war “on the cheap”? The Congress has appropriated funds necessary to forestall the aim of aforementioned parties and it is the duty of the President to use those funds to defend the country to the utmost against, again, parties which wish us destroyed. And you’re taking exception? Oh, sweetie, wait until a certain actor whom you’ve seen in “Bedtime for Bonzo” seizes the presidency and spends over $700 a piece for hammers for the armed forces, which will partially explain trillion-dollar-deficits. Then we’ll get back to you and ask your opinion. Surely we can count on that opinion being, shall we say, apoplectic? Or is it just Mr. Roosevelt who gets under your skin? Enquiring minds wish to know.

6. “… vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.” A vote in November 1944 six months hence will, dear “Reader,” get you nine more months, not years, of war, and just about one month of a Roosevelt fourth term.

So buck up, dear “Reader“! The end is nigh. Now go sit by the radio and let General Eisenhower entertain you with tales from a place called Omaha Beach. And then write back and tell us how much money you would have allocated to the D-Day Invasion of German-occupied Europe, the largest military invasion in human history. Give us a hint. $100,000? $200,000? Can’t wait for your fascinating reply!

Bang Bang, Crash Crash.

Not surprised. Grieved. Shell-shocked. But not surprised. Worst death toll yet in Orlando, five in a domestic in hometown Roswell, another one averted in West Hollywood where friends are marching for our right to live and love today. It’s an endless list … they’re just like car wrecks now … 32,675 dead on the roadways in 2014 didn’t make us blink, while 475 dead in 372 mass shootings in 2015 made us yearn for more anger and violence … so there’s lots of room for more … the merrier. There’s tons of land for cemeteries.

Sing it: “This land is your land, this land is my land … this necropolis was made for you and me.”

The Dawn of Childish Just Me

William Bradley’s ‘The Dawn of ‘Just Me’: Zack Snyder’s Neoliberal Superheroes’, just published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, contains a telling paragraph, the first part of which exactly sums up someone I personally know. I suppose it’s true of Zack Snyder, the person and the director, as well. Seems bang on:

‘In the end, I don’t know that Zack Snyder’s Superman films demonstrate a coherent philosophy. They seem to be the reflections of a guy who read a lot of superhero comic books as a child, made his action figures fight each other, saw a lot of special effects-driven blockbusters, read some Ayn Rand, got stoned, listened to some Rush, and then, as an adult, was loaned copies of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and The Dark Knight Returns and came to believe that the entertainment of his childhood could be made acceptable for an adult audience if it was just made a little bloodier.’
—William Bradley, The Los Angeles Review of Books

This paragraph also captures an aspect of this kind of persona rather well:

‘Or the scene toward the beginning of Watchmen (2009), during the weekly “beer session” shared between Dan and Hollis. Note how Dan announces that he needs to get going, despite the fact that he still has about two-thirds of his beer left. Imagine you had a guest over, and that guest opened a beer while you were talking, and then promptly set the beer down and announced, “I must leave now.” You would assume that you had said something offensive to prompt such an abrupt exit. That, or your guest is an android who does not yet properly understand human protocol surrounding conversations over drinks.’
—Ibid.

Mr. Bradley appears to have met some of the same people I’ve met.

Ignorant and Doomed

Among savages incapable of retaining collectively learned experience, a perpetual infancy results. I can no longer figure out these days whether I’m reading history or current events. [Note to self: If it’s on the Kindle, it’s a history book. If it’s on the web browser on my laptop, it’s currently happening.]

Berlin, 4-May-27:
“Goebbels spoke again at the Veteran’s Association House. ‘A fresh heckler was thrown out into the fresh air,’ he noted laconically in his diary. … Somebody had indeed heckled Goebbels during his speech and on a signal from the Gauleiter had been seized by a horde of SA men, brutally manhandled, and thrown down the stairs. A journalist from the Scherl publishing house who was discovered in the hall was subjected to the same treatment. …”
—_Goebbels: A Biography_ by Peter Longerich 2015

Columbus, OH, 21-Nov-15:
“Then, when Mr. Trump began talking about surveillance of refugees, the college-age couple standing in front of the students began chanting, “Hating Muslims helps ISIS.” The students were caught off guard, but after a moment of uncertainty, some of them joined in.
“Mr. Hopkins [a Trump supporter at the rally] leaned over and screamed, “Shut up!”
“Mr. Trump stopped his remarks and looked toward the commotion with disgust. “Two people, two people,” he said dismissively of the couple, as the crowd started booing and the people around them began shouting. “So sad,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah, you can get ’em the hell out.”
“The crowd erupted in triumph as the protesters and students turned to leave. “Get out of here!” Mr. Hopkins shouted, shoving one of the two protesters in the back on his way out.
“One of the high school girls said afterward that as they exited, people in the crowd had asked them, “If you don’t love America, why don’t you just leave?” and that a man had told her that if she had not been filming on her phone, he would have slapped her.
“She and another student said they had heard an epithet for black people hurled their way.
“After Mr. Trump wrapped up his speech and “We’re Not Gonna Take It” blasted on the speakers, Mr. Hopkins rushed to the stage to get a picture of Mr. Trump.
“Asked what he thought of the rally, he said: “It’s like a movement! And he’s a man of action.”
“And the protesters? “Very rude.””
—_The Wasington Post_, 25-Nov-15

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
—_The Life of Reason_ (1905-06), George Santayana

I need add nothing to all that.

70 Years On

[Fair warning: Not a happy or basset-y post. (Didn’t help my, shall we say, outlook on life, that our water heater failed and flooded the den and we’re down to weak cold water in the bathroom and heating water in pots on the stove like we did in 1975.) And it contains opinion at the end which you may or may not like. Just do what I do often with Facebook; hide or don’t read this post. Happier/doggier/noncontroversial posts will be return when I’m in a better mood.]

Today is the 70th anniversary of the liberation by elements of the Red Army’s First Ukrainian Front of the Polish city of Oswiecim and the German konzentration/vernichtung lager system surrounding it. Auschwitz (Hell realized on Earth) is quite real. I’ve been there. The only difference between 27-Jan-45 and today is that you can visit this hell without getting burned. They sell postcards and photobooks in Hell on Earth’s gift shop, actually. It’s jarring, but quite human, to buy postcards at the gravesite of 1.1 million murdered people.

I took pictures there 15 years ago this April. It was quiet and beautiful and a nice springtime day in rural Poland. Hell had moved to other places long before I got there.

Yes, the Shoah is real. And no, it shouldn’t happen again. But it has happened/is happening again since ’45 and it will again after this anniversary. The first concentration camp was set up by Spain in Cuba in 1897. We had them scattered throughout the American west during the 19th century and we’re still operating one at Guantanamo Bay today. The Russian gulags are probably still operating as well, and no telling what North Korea is like; it’s darker than the Polish Warthegau/Generalgouvernement areas were in 1943. But we do know that millions have probably died there.

The Auschwitz complex is huge and covers many miles in up to 45 different satellite camps. Auschwitz I – Main is the site of Gaskammer/Krema I, where Zyklon B was first used. Now the main camp houses a museum with human hair (many still braided as it was when it was cut off) and luggage and eyeglasses and prayer shawls and cooking pots and dentures and shoes. You can stand in Gaskammer I and see the purple stains on the wall, remnants of Zyklon B.

Auschwitz II – Birkenau is down the road a couple of miles from the main camp. It is the most photographed/well known; Gaskammers/Kremas II – V are located there and it was in those buildings that most of the 1.1 million Jews, Gypsies, mischlinge/halflinge, political prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other undesirables met their deaths.

Auschwitz III – Monowitz/Buna is where slave labor (those who were selected for work instead of extermination) produced synthetic gas and rubber (using fuel from such sources as Standard Oil of the US, which continued to provide Germany with Ethyl gas (remember that brand?) up until the early months of January 1942. IBM provided the machines that tabulated and kept tabs on the undesirables. General Electric, Ford (and Henry and Edsel themselves) and other American companies and individuals helped out too. And yes, we knew the camps were there (and had aerial photos), but refused to bomb it out of existence, fearing we would “kill innocent people,” a concern that apparently was out of fashion by 1945, re. Dresden and Hiroshima.

I took pics of the main camp, Auschwitz I: One as we got ready to walk through the famous gate with its encouraging “Works Makes [you] Free” sign (stolen a few years back, recovered in pieces and now in the museum, replaced by a replica). Another of the highly electrified no-man’s land separating the prison blocks from administration blocks at Auschwitz I. Yet another of Gaskammer/Krema I, where Soviet prisoners of war became the first to inhale Zyklon B en masse. Underneath that chimney are two crematory ovens. To the side is the gallows where they hung the camp commandant in 1947. Just to the side of the gallows is the pretty white house where his wife and five children lived; they played in the yard as their father burned people next door. And more (I hope to get the time to post them here soon.)

We then went a mile down the road to the more famous Auschwitz II – Birkenau, the vernichtungslager (extermination camp). It housed workers and Roma and Sinta families and the Sonderkommando responsible for pulling bodies from the gaskammers and putting them into the ovens. Most Sonderkommando, after a certain time, followed the dead up the chimney. I took more pics; one of the latrine for Birkenau slave labor. No, there were no toilet seats or running water. Use of these communal spaces was permitted twice a day; when you left for work and when you came home to bed. Another pic I took was of the view SS officers in charge of “selections” had: the trains arrived from all over Europe, passed through the arch in the guard house and were parked on this siding. The selection chose a small quota for work; everyone else went up the chimney … sometimes in as little as an hour.

Today, speeches were made, the last 300 survivors were paraded in a tent and one noted, “Jews are targeted in Europe once again because they are Jews … Once again young Jewish boys are afraid to wear yarmulkes [skullcaps] on the streets of Paris, Budapest, London and even Berlin.”

The response? Statements by world politicians were issued with the usual words, but without an effort to actually fly to Cracow and drive 45 minutes. The leader of the liberating nation sent his regrets; seems the Red Army is a bit preoccupied in the Ukraine again. So he stayed in Moscow and posed with a rabbi lighting a candle. American and British politicians roused themselves briefly to post platitudes on Twitter, then went back to plundering their respective treasuries. Germany’s bundeskanzler called Auschwitz “a disgrace.” And executions for all kinds of reasons proceeded apace this week in Saudi Arabia, Syria, China, North Korea … Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma …

Sorry to be on the pessimistic side … but I’ve been there. And if we can’t learn from setting our own eyes on Auschwitz/Birkenau (and events of this century so far indicate we have not) … then … there will be more anniversary commemorations in other places in the world.

WN345 Nose Gear Collapse at KLGA

“WN737-700 N753SW, operating as Southwest 345 from Nashville (KBNA) experiences nose gear collapse on arrival at KLGA.” …

“LEAVE. YOUR. CRAP. ON. THE. PLANE. DURING. AN. EVAC!!!”

Me, Many Times

WN737-700 N753SW, operating as Southwest 345 from Nashville (KBNA) experiences nose gear collapse on arrival at KLGA. Left here at 2:33 p.m. TeeWee news channels (thank god) are so focused on serial killers and the Windsors’ latest reproduction that they’ve given very little air time to the incident, and so we’re spared the horror of their overwrought and willfully stupid coverage. Local news here in Music City is not much better. Given the local connection, they’re frothing only marginally less than the nationals. Read avherald.com tomorrow for real coverage.

[Insert the usual rant here.] LEAVE. YOUR. CRAP. ON. THE. PLANE. DURING. AN. EVAC. «No cell phone, no purse, no rollerboard full of vacation souvenirs made in China is worth people getting injured or killed because you have to wrestle your kitchen sink down the aisle and through the door». Think about someone besides yourself for a change.[/rant]

And the appalling/hilarious background to this photo is unfolding on Twitter as “social media producers” with the likes of CNBC, Fox, etc., pressuring the photog for rights to publish the pic. Not sure whether to throw up or laugh myself into a heart attack …

Sorry We Destroyed Your Life After You Saved Our Country

“Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon.” …

“I am certain that but for his work we would have lost the war through starvation.”

Lady Trumpington, 2013

Ooops. «Sorry about the whole castration/murder even though you were actually a major war hero, couldn’t have done it without you, thing.». Fags are cool, now. So. Yeah. Like, we good? We good here?

“Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon.
“The government signalled on Friday that it is prepared to support a backbench bill that would pardon Turing, who died from cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 in 1954 after he was subjected to “chemical castration.”
…
“The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. They include Oscar Wilde.
…
“The government threw its weight behind the private member’s bill, promoted by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Sharkey, after a debate that featured a contribution from a peer who worked at Bletchley Park. Lady Trumpington told peers: “The block I worked in was devoted to German naval codes. Only once was I asked to deliver a paper to Alan Turing, so … I cannot claim that I knew him. However, I am certain that but for his work we would have lost the war through starvation.”
“Turing broke German ciphers using the bombe method, which allowed the code-breakers to crack the German Enigma code. His colleague Tommy Flowers built the Colossus computer. Ahmad described Turing as “one of the fathers, if not the father, of computer science.”
…
“Sharkey said: “As I think everybody knows, he was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency and sentenced to chemical castration. He committed suicide two years later. The government know that Turing was a hero and a very great man. They acknowledge that he was cruelly treated. They must have seen the esteem in which he is held here and around the world.””

The arc just bent a little more towards justice, in this case, only taking 70 years.

At Least One American Gets It

“America currently has no functioning democracy. ”

James Earl Carter, 39th President of the U.S.

“Amerika hat derzeit keine funktionierende Demokratie … Ich glaube, die Invasion der Privatsphäre ist zu weit gegangen. Und ich glaube, dass die Geheimnistuerei darum exzessiv gewesen ist. [Snowden’s revelations] wahrscheinlich nützlich, da sie die Öffentlichkeit informieren … nie zuvor dagewesene Verletzung unser Privatsphäre durch die Regierung. ”
—Jimmy Carter

Loose translation: “America currently has no functioning democracy … I think the invasion of privacy has gone too far. And I think that is why the secrecy was excessive. [Snowden’s revelations were] probably useful because they inform the public … [we’ve] never before seen our privacy violated by the government.” «[Der Spiegel]»

Jimmy is probably at the top of an NSA watch list somewhere, something which would no doubt greatly please those on the right.

The only quibble I have with this, Mr. President, is that you make it out to be a recent thing. We’ve had no functioning democracy to speak of since A.) You lost your re-election bid in 1980; B.) When the Democrats lost the house in 1994 and ushered in their “Contract on America”; and/or C.) When the Supreme Court dictated the results of the 2000 election, giving the presidency to the loser of the election, each of these being a signpost along the road to our present corporatocracy. Otherwise, bang-on, Jimmy!

I Believe …

“Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity.”

Edward Snowden

“I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945 … Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.’
— Edward Snowden

Yes … but, Mr. Snowden, you are up against a public-private entity unprecedented in its power and hypocrisy and self-delusion. We have those duties, yes. But what does that look like? Surely it doesn’t look like a press conference in a Moscow airport. But what?

Woo-Hoo! Occupy the Corporations!

Susan Ohanian’s piece in « Daily Censored » needs wider distribution. Here are two highlights:

“In response to a poverty rate that tops 90% in many urban and rural schools –and 1.6 million homeless children—many in schools with no libraries–education reformers at the White House, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Governors Association call for a radical, untried curriculum overhaul and two versions of nonstop national testing to measure whether teachers are producing workers for the Global Economy.
…
“There is resistance. A national movement of parents opting their children out of standardized testing started when Professor Tim Slekar and his wife went with their son Luke to a school conference to learn why Luke’s grades were slipping. The teacher showed them a sample paper, with a test-prep writing prompt: Write about the two most exciting times you have had with your family. Luke’s response, started, “Whoo-hoo! Let me tell you about my great family vacation trip to the Adirondacks.”
“The teacher stopped Luke and asked him to explain to his parents why this opening was unacceptable. “Whoo-hoo! isn’t a sentence,” he acknowledged, adding that the first sentence to a writing prompt must begin by restating the prompt. The teacher said that according to standards, Luke’s response would have been scored a zero, and her obligation was to prepare children to pass the state test. Feeling that education shouldn’t be about preparing students to write answers in a format low-paid temp workers can score, the Slekars decided to opt Luke out of future standardized testing. “We would not allow our son to provide data to a system that was designed to prove that he, the teacher, the system, and the community were failing.” Tim found people of like mind– Peggy Robertson, Morna McDermmott, Ceresta Smith, Shaun Johnson and Laurie Murphy–and together they founded United Opt Out, a national movement to opt students out of standardized testing. Its endorsers include John Kuhn, an outspoken Texas school superintendent, who says, “Parents and students have the power to say when enough is enough.”
—Susan Ohanian

Enough? It’s been enough for years. And it may be quite a few more before enough people say enough is enough. And, afraid to say, it’s unlikely that a tipping point will be reached. Ever the cynic am I, but while Seattle parents may (in an encouraging development) put a halt to the insanity in their back yard, parents in, say, Nashville, and Oklahoma City, are clueless, lack information, and will probably not say enough until it’s quite too late.

Woo-Hoo! Occupy the Corporations! (2013)

Susan Ohanian’s piece in « Daily Censored » needs wider distribution. Here are two highlights:

“In response to a poverty rate that tops 90% in many urban and rural schools –and 1.6 million homeless children—many in schools with no libraries–education reformers at the White House, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Governors Association call for a radical, untried curriculum overhaul and two versions of nonstop national testing to measure whether teachers are producing workers for the Global Economy.
…
“There is resistance. A national movement of parents opting their children out of standardized testing started when Professor Tim Slekar and his wife went with their son Luke to a school conference to learn why Luke’s grades were slipping. The teacher showed them a sample paper, with a test-prep writing prompt: Write about the two most exciting times you have had with your family. Luke’s response, started, “Whoo-hoo! Let me tell you about my great family vacation trip to the Adirondacks.”
“The teacher stopped Luke and asked him to explain to his parents why this opening was unacceptable. “Whoo-hoo! isn’t a sentence,” he acknowledged, adding that the first sentence to a writing prompt must begin by restating the prompt. The teacher said that according to standards, Luke’s response would have been scored a zero, and her obligation was to prepare children to pass the state test. Feeling that education shouldn’t be about preparing students to write answers in a format low-paid temp workers can score, the Slekars decided to opt Luke out of future standardized testing. “We would not allow our son to provide data to a system that was designed to prove that he, the teacher, the system, and the community were failing.” Tim found people of like mind– Peggy Robertson, Morna McDermmott, Ceresta Smith, Shaun Johnson and Laurie Murphy–and together they founded United Opt Out, a national movement to opt students out of standardized testing. Its endorsers include John Kuhn, an outspoken Texas school superintendent, who says, “Parents and students have the power to say when enough is enough.”
—Susan Ohanian

Enough? It’s been enough for years. And it may be quite a few more before enough people say enough is enough. And, afraid to say, it’s unlikely that a tipping point will be reached. Ever the cynic am I, but while Seattle parents may (in an encouraging development) put a halt to the insanity in their back yard, parents in, say, Nashville, and Oklahoma City, are clueless, lack information, and will probably not say enough until it’s quite too late.

Just Like Nixon

The person I personally refer to as Joey the Rat, Pope Ben-a-Nazi XVI, announced his resignation today. A review of his greatest hits is « here ».

Interesting (on many levels) that his resignation letter is addressed, not once, but twice to “Dear Brothers,” with nary a mention to, oh I don’t know, all those nuns and the 51% of humanity which is of the female persuasion from whence those nuns come.

Meanwhile in Ireland, Joey’s church created a « gigantic, stinko mess » (speaking of its attitude towards and treatment of women) and it has now slunk off and left it up to the Irish state to take care of it. Not that they will take care of it, but it’s defaulting to them anyway.

What a legacy. « Member of the Hitler Jugend » (“No! I was forced to join!”); « Luftwaffe auxiliary » who helped load AA guns and set tank traps (“No! I was forced to pull the trigger!”); to the massive « world-wide coverup » of generations of sexual abuse by the clergy (“No! Those priests loved those children!”); to decades of « gay-bashing » (“No! Those people don’t deserve equality ‘cause they’re endangering humanity!”); to his embrace and « pardoning from excommunication » a Holocaust denier (“No! I was just re-integrating the Society of St. Pius X into the church!”) … well, it was all just as fabulous as his red Prada shoes.

Yeesh.

And?


“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
—Barack Obama

[Meanwhile, his “gay brothers and sisters” tap their feet, waiting impatiently. Well, then, hurry it up already!]

Finally

I was the first registered Republican in my family. I cast my first vote in a presidential election for Ronald Reagan, the second for George H.W. Bush. I listened to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, thought I was a Dittohead, and was one of the few who watched and liked his television show. I actually cried when George Sr. and Barbara left the White House to Bill and Hilary in January 1993.

And then the Republicans lurched to the fringe, became immoderate, aggressive, in-your-face, and triumphal, became harnessed to extremist religious philosophy. They attacked anytime President Clinton breathed. Limbaugh yelled (in 1992) that he was happy to be in the opposition; it’s more fun, you can snipe and bitch and moan and not have to actually do anything. The Republicans launched their Contract on America (er, I mean for).

And then, in 1994, came Harry and Louise. Corporate money flooded in, and the Republicans steamrollered and destroyed health care reform, dooming hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to premature death over the next 16 years. The militias and ti-foilists, precursors to the Tea-baggers, came out. And all that culminated in terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s murder of 168 people in my own backyard in the service of a right-wing political philosophy.

I mourned the loss of health care, as well as the Murrah Building, and ranted and railed against my party. In 1996, I registered as a Democrat, voted for Bill Clinton and then watched the Republicans continue to make war, year after year, against the middle class, and especially against gay and lesbian Americans like me.

I’ve been trying to remember exactly what the turning point for me was. And I’m almost 100% certain it was health care reform. When the Republicans attacked and destroyed the possibility of a saner, more humane health care payment system, they also attacked and destroyed me. I returned to the Democratic fold where my family had originally been for the better part of a century.

I didn’t turn on the Republicans, as the saying goes; they turned on me.

Their behavior right now, as we wait for the final House vote, is beyond disgusting. No lie too big or too outrageous to read into the Congressional record or give to the cameras at CNN.

But to me, it doesn’t matter what happens in November; I realize the Democrats will probably pay a price. And I don’t care. It takes courage to do the right thing, they’ve finally grown a bit of a pair, it’s the right start. And if they lose control, fine. The resulting nastiness will, once again, prove to Americans who too easily forget history, that the right does not have our best interests at heart, only those of corporate boards and religious charlatans.

Will watch the final vote and the president’s statement following. And be finally relieved that 100 years of obstruction of a basic fundamental human right has finally ended.

It is Difficult …

“How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1965

… to keep up a blog like this one, which has, at various times in the past, been chock-a-block with details and observations from our lives. Living two years back in California, with the attendant extreme stresses, drained the blogging impulse from both of us. Plus, there was the whole medical drama on my part.

It would be great to have all kinds of observations about Nashville here, just as we did in Ann Arbor, but … well, we’re older and tired-er than we were in Ann Arbor. But still, we’ll try to do better.

Two things: Voters of Maine, except the quarter million who voted to stand up for marriage equality last Tuesday, … well, they suck. Marriage equality is coming to the United States and you will be embarrassed by this travesty of justice, this orgy of discrimination and hate, when the day arrives. I’m holding fast to Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” As the LA Times reported:

“It is “one of King’s most riveting lines, spoken in Montgomery, Alabama after the long and dangerous march from Selma in March, 1965. King said he knew people were asking how long it would take to achieve justice. “How long?” he asked, over and over, making listeners desperate for an answer — and then he supplied the answer. “How long? Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It was a refrain King came to use often, sometimes referring to the “arc of history,” sometimes to the “arc of the moral universe.”“

The arc is bending toward marriage equality. It will come, probably before my I leave the planet. And to that, I will hold fast.

Secondly, I finally summoned the will and physical ability to return to the classroom and do a half-day substitute teaching, first time in six months. I have another assignment lined up for next Tuesday. It was exhausting and it was my limit (I’m not ready for full days yet), but it was also fun and reminded me why I like teaching kids. I’ll get more and more into the daily grind until the end of school in May, then have some rest time and will start a second master’s degree program, to become certified in the early childhood autism special education and applied behavior therapy. That program at Vanderbilt starts in August, and I’m looking forward to it.

In the meantime, the beagles are fat and happy and having fun in the leaves. I found a largish tick on Fergus yesterday, that had to be removed before going to work; it was probably a souvenir of our tramps through the woods on the battlefield of Chickamauga last weekend. Otherwise, the boys are doing great.

And Nashville … an awesome place to live. We’re coming up on the first anniversary of the flight out of California to safety and haven of Tennessee. And don’t regret for a minute the decision. Plus, our landladies and neighbor and neighborhood and schools are far superior to what we left behind in Brentwood.

So, it’s all good.

The Final Passing of American Journalism

“And that’s the way it is …”

Walter Cronkite

It feels as if the last bit of actual journalism in America is now dead.

In «What We Lose With Cronkite’s Death», Bruce Maiman sums it up pretty well:

“… it’s a reminder, too, that the broadcasting style and journalistic credibility that Cronkite represents also seems to be fading into history. Cronkite’s death was inevitable rather than sad, but what is sad is that no one has picked up his mantle to deliver the news in a fashion that doesn’t glorify something or someone, or trash something or someone. Cronkite set a standard for conveying the news that was at once warm, measured, dignified, good humored and uncompromising.”

He also notes one of my favorite stories about Cronkite:

&#8220In her autobiography, «A Desperate Passion», physician and Nuclear Freeze activist Helen Caldicott tells the story of when she met Cronkite and his wife Betsy at a dinner one night: “Walter amazed me by saying that if he had his way, he would remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. “What would the Russians do then, roll over people with their tanks?” he asked. I said: “The American people love you, Walter. Why don’t you tell them that?” He laughed and replied, “I’m only loved because they don’t know what I think.””

The ever-excellent Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, touches on all of this in «Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did»:

“Tellingly, his most celebrated and significant moment — Greg Mitchell says “this broadcast would help save many thousands of lives, U.S. and Vietnamese, perhaps even a million” — was when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn’t trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false. In other words, Cronkite’s best moment was when he did exactly that which the modern journalist today insists they must not ever do — directly contradict claims from government and military officials and suggest that such claims should not be believed. These days, our leading media outlets won’t even use words that are disapproved of by the Government.”

Cronkite, and the pathetic remains of American journalism, will be laid to rest on Thursday.

And THAT, my friends, is the way it is, on this Sunday, 20-Jul-09, the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

The Right Way

“The whole world is watching what we do here. We’re going to win or lose this war depending on how we do this.”

Ali Soufan

The story of the United States of America joining the long and black list of nations who abuse and torture prisoners and then invent all sorts of justifications for it is dribbling out slowly. «A new article in Newsweek» is one of the best I’ve seen so far at laying out both the nitty-gritty and some of the bigger cultural issues at play.

The article centers on the story of Ali Soufan, one of the FBI’s top experts on Al Qaeda who also ‘had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic.’ It was Soufani who successfully discovered both the Jose Padilla dirty bomb plot and the identity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (one a preventive and one a prosecutorial piece of detective work) within the rule of law, without using torture:

“Last week Soufan, 37, now a security consultant who spends most of his time in the Middle East, decided to tell the story of his involvement in the Abu Zubaydah interrogations publicly for the first time. In an op-ed in The New York Times and in a series of exclusive interviews with Newsweek, Soufan described how he, together with FBI colleague Steve Gaudin, began the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. They nursed his wounds, gained his confidence and got the terror suspect talking. They extracted crucial intelligence—including the identity of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the architect of 9/11 and the dirty-bomb plot of Jose Padilla—before CIA contractors even began their aggressive tactics.’ … “I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective,” he says. “We were able to get the information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a couple of days. We didn’t have to do any of this [torture]. We could have done this the right way. ” [Emphasis added.]

What did ‘the right way’ look like?

“As the sessions continued, Soufan engaged Abu Zubaydah in long discussions about his world view, which included a tinge of socialism. After Abu Zubaydah railed one day about the influence of American imperialist corporations, he asked Soufan to get him a Coca-Cola—a request that prompted the two of them to laugh. Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information—about the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a “dirty bomb” inside the country. This information led to Padilla’s arrest in Chicago by the FBI in early May. ”

But Bush/Cheney and the CIA didn’t want ‘the right way,’ followed (it was too calm and too much namby-pamby ‘police action’ for them) and manufactured, through the compliant devices of the likes of John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the means to ramp up torture. And the only objections that seemed forthcoming appear to have been centered on the potential political blowback, not on the inhumane, immoral, and illegal acts being undertaken:

“Pasquale D’Amuro, then the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism … and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan. They fretted about the political consequences of abusive interrogations and the Washington blowback they thought was inevitable, say two high-ranking FBI sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. According to a later Justice Department inspector general’s report, D’Amuro warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be investigated. “Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this,” D’Amuro said, according to one of the sources. ”

The issue, as usual, follows America’s cultural fault lines. There are (hopefully a minority) Americans who, in this case, are so steeped in fear and anger that they have no problem using any means necessary, including those of history’s worst human offenders as well as contemporary terrorists, in order to feed that fear and anger. The fault lines not only run through society, but through all government service as well:

“… in early 2002, Soufan flew to Guantánamo to conduct a training course. He gave a powerful talk, preaching the virtues of the FBI’s traditional rapport-building techniques. Not only were such methods the most effective, Soufan explained that day, they were critical to maintaining America’s image in the Middle East. “The whole world is watching what we do here,” Soufan said. “We’re going to win or lose this war depending on how we do this.” As he made these comments, about half the interrogators in the room—those from the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies—were “nodding their heads” in agreement, recalls McFadden. But the other half—CIA and military officers—sat there “with blank stares. It’s like they were thinking, This is bullcrap. Their attitude was, ‘You guys are cops; we don’t have time for this’.” ”

Americans on one side committed to the rule of law and cognizant of the possible price that has to be paid to follow it; on the other side those who would jettison it when the going gets rough and their fear and anger get control of them. The same is true in the general society. There are Americans who are so fearful and anger that they stock the house with guns and loudly tell anyone who will listen that ‘if anyone tries to break in their house, they’ll blow ‘em away!’ and then tries to pass laws that arm teachers (ostensibly to prevent more Columbines) and carry guns into restaurants and so on and so on. There are Americans who accept that life is sometimes dangerous and short and that if something happens the police are there to ‘protect and serve.’ And then get on with their lives.

Meanwhile, the torture story goes on. The documents being examined tell the story about how our nation willfully abrogated the rule of law and committed acts for which we prosecuted and executed or jailed perpetrators in other nations within our living memory. And the perpetrators, like many Germans and Japanese of the 1933-45 period and communists of the Soviet and People’s Republic periods, will probably never be brought to heel for what they’ve done. Especially if they think like Torturer James Mitchell:

“Although Soufan declined to identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts) identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had worked on the U.S. military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training—a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Within days of his arrival, Mitchell—an architect of the CIA interrogation program—took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah. He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques. One day Soufan entered Abu Zubadyah’s room and saw that he had been stripped naked; he covered him with a towel. The confrontations began. “I asked [the contractor] if he’d ever interrogated anyone, and he said no,” Soufan says. But that didn’t matter, the contractor shot back: “Science is science. This is a behavioral issue.” The contractor suggested Soufan was the inexperienced one. “He told me he’s a psychologist and he knows how the human mind works.” Mitchell told Newsweek, “I would love to tell my story.” But then he added, “I have signed a nondisclosure agreement that will not even allow me to correct false allegations.” ”

How convenient. And how very … American. And human. And disgusting.

Two Right-Wing Terrorist Murders in Two Weeks

And now two right-wing terrorists have committed two political murders in two weeks. First Dr. Tiller in Wichita, a murder which was, from the point of view of the terrorists, successful in its aims. Now, an obscene attack on the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum begs the question, are we in for a Summer of Rage?

Researcher Chip Berlet «notes where we are at the moment»:

Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation. Some angry people already believe conspiracy theories in which the same scapegoats are portrayed as subversive, destructive, or evil. Add in aggressive apocalyptic ideas that suggest time is running out and quick action mandatory and you have a perfect storm of mobilized resentment threatening to rain bigotry and violence across the United States.’
—Huffington Post

The same right-wing pundits are now getting a bit nervous at what they have wrought; Fox News pundit Shepard Smith reportedly said today:

“There are people now, who are way out there on a limb. And I think they’re just out there on a limb with the email they send us. Because I read it, and they are out there. I mean, out there in a scary place…I could read a hundred of them like this…I mean from today. People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous.”

Could be a long, hot, murderous summer we’re looking at here.

Marriage Equality Arrives in Connecticut

The governor of Connecticut signed «marriage equality into law today». Equal protection under the law as provided in the U.S. Constitution was thereby affirmed by all three branches of the government.

‘Four years ago this week, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed a bill allowing civil unions. Today, with the stroke of a pen, she abolished them. Rell this afternoon signed Senate Bill 899, which incorporates the findings of the Kerrigan case into Connecticut statutes. That ruling, handed down by the state Supreme Court in October, paved the way for same-sex marriage. Both the House and the Senate spent hours yesterday debating Senate Bill 899, which passed only after an amendment was added that provides an exemption to groups who object to same-sex marriage on religious grounds.’

Best quotes of the day:

““This bipartisan vote is a strong affirmation of the Kerrigan decision and the dignity and respect of same-sex couples and their families,” Anne Stanback, executive director of Love Makes a Family said in a statement. “Today, fairness won out over fear.”“

and

“Sen. Andrew McDonald, a Democrat from Stamford and leading gay rights advocate, hailed the new law. “Our legislature and our governor now have ratified the Supreme Court’s decision, and today all three branches of Connecticut’s government speak with one voice: discrimination has no place in our state and will be eradicated wherever it appears,” McDonald said in a press release.”

As Frank Rich of the Times said, marriage equality in America is inevitable. Good on yer, Connecticut!

The Bigots' Last Hurrah

It’s a great title for a great «column». Frank Rich of the New York Times sums up very thoroughly and very presciently the status of one of America’s favorite Culture War battlegrounds/sports grounds in which people like us are kicked around like political footballs (cartoon at left is from 2004, Steve Kelley of the New Orleans Times-Picayune).

Rich, who has long been a voice of reason and sanity in insane Bush world, starts by highlighting the hugely laughable and inept so-called ‘national organization for marriage’ gathering storm video, noting that the response, other than among those 22% who actually approved of George W. Bush as of 19-Jan-09, was either laughter or yawning. (By the way, that 22% approval rating is the lowest ever recorded for any occupant of the White House.)

Rich then moves on to the recent Iowa and Vermont victories and notes that resistance on the right is crumbling:

‘On the right, the restrained response was striking. Fox barely mentioned the subject; its rising-star demagogue, Glenn Beck, while still dismissing same-sex marriage, went so far as to “celebrate what happened in Vermont” because “instead of the courts making a decision, the people did.” Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the self-help media star once notorious for portraying homosexuality as “a biological error” and a gateway to pedophilia, told CNN’s Larry King that she now views committed gay relationships as “a beautiful thing and a healthy thing.” In The New York Post, the invariably witty and invariably conservative writer Kyle Smith demolished a Maggie Gallagher screed published in National Review and wondered whether her errant arguments against gay equality were “something else in disguise.” More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had “never” been and “never will be” an “anti-gay-marriage activist.” This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.’

Rich then points out the handwriting on the wall:

As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.” Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right’s two major arguments against marriage equality.’

He then rounds out the column with discussion about how the right’s ostensible 2012 candidates are still clinging to (yet one more) Lost Cause … and that it will probably hurt them:

‘In 2008, 60 percent of Iowa’s Republican caucus voters were evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee won. That’s the hurdle facing the party’s contenders in 2012, which is why Romney, Palin and Gingrich are now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren. … This month, even as the father of Palin’s out-of-wedlock grandson challenged her own family values and veracity, she nominated as Alaskan attorney general a man who has called gay people “degenerates.” Such homophobia didn’t even play in Alaska — the State Legislature voted the nominee down — and will doom Republicans like Palin in national elections.’

He then notes that more moderate (and sane) Republican leaders, including one in a very surprising place, are urging a move away from the madness. McCain-Palin 2008 campaign strategist has ‘come out’ this week in urging the party to endorse marriage equality, as has Meghan McCain, the candidate’s daughter, who memorably said this week, ‘Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past. [and] Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future.”

The surprise? Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, a Mormon Republican presiding over the reddest of all American red states, who told Frank Rich:

‘“We must embrace all citizens as equals … I’ve always stood tall on this. … A lot of people gave the issue more scrutiny after it became the topic of the week,” he said, and started to see it “in human terms.” Letters, calls, polls and conversations with voters around the state all confirmed to him that opinion has “shifted quite substantially” toward his point of view.’

Did his stance hurt him in ultra-conservative, ultra-religious, ultra-red Utah? No. ‘Huntsman’s approval rating now stands at 84 percent,’ said Rich.

Rich then sums up the whole matter brilliantly in his final paragraph, sounding a much-needed note of optimism and hope:

‘As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.’

That stands repeating: ‘It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering.‘

We currently second-class American citizens thank you and say god bless you, Frank Rich. But we’re still second-class citizens. And it will be hard to continue waiting at the back of the bus for America’s promised ‘equal protection under the law.’ But we’ll hang in there.

Germans Join UN Racism Conference Boycott

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced that Germany will join the U.S., Israel and other countries in a «boycott» of the upcoming United Nations World Conference Against Racism after “a draft declaration circulated earlier this year made Israel responsible for the entire Middle East conflict, while human rights violations in Muslim countries were largely ignored.”

Preparations for the conference have been “dominated by Libya, Cuba, and Iran.” Holocaust Denier and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due to address the conference tomorrow, 20-April, the 120th anniversary of Hitler’s birth.

Italy, Canada and Austria are also boycotting, as well as the Netherlands:

‘Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said in a statement that countries with questionable human rights records were seeking to abuse the gathering “to place religion ahead of human rights and unnecessarily curtail freedom of speech, to negate discrimination against homosexuality, and to place Israel alone in the accused bench”.’

Britain and France will attend as scheduled, although the Brits will be “watching carefully” developments and the French want to “articulate clearly their human rights position.”

I suppose this lands me amid the ranks of conservatives on this issue, but I support the U.S. boycott. Racism should not be fought with … reverse racism, not to mention historical ignorance.

Rarin' to Go

Gavin Newsom, the man who presided over our first civil union ceremony when he was still a San Francisco supervisor, wants to get a jump on gay marriages «the evening of 16 June», instead of waiting for the next morning:

‘San Francisco officials have asked the state for permission to begin marrying same-sex couples a little earlier than scheduled, on the evening of June 16 instead of the morning of June 17. Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city officials are wondering when the state Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex nuptials actually takes effect. The state has told county clerks the ruling kicks in the morning of June 17. But city officials want to know whether they can legally begin to issue the marriage licenses at 5:01 p.m. June 16 – right after the end of the state’s workday.
“Unquestionably, we hope to extend beyond 5 o’clock. Why wouldn’t we?” Newsom said Wednesday. “People have longed for this for 30 and 40 years. I don’t think we should deny that just on the basis of a bureaucratic timeline.” Such a change would require permission from the state Office of Vital Records, which oversees the issuance of marriage licenses for all of California’s 58 counties.’
—SFGate.com

Exactly. We’ve been waiting 30-40 years for this. Time to get on with it.

And about the ballot measure in November? Time to mobilize a big ol’ no vote.

Reg Dwight Gets Hitched

High-profile celebrity civil commitment ceremony: check. Quaint British setting (the same location as Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles’ ceremony in April): check. Crowds of paparazzi: check. Almost as many everyday well-wishers: check.

Only, the couple is Elton John and David Furnish, and for some reason, in the UK (and in Canada, and in a number of other Western countries) it just really isn’t that big of a deal. “He’s a queen, but he’s our queen,” one Brit cracked, as she held aloft a banner congratulating the couple. When the first ceremonies were held in Belfast (Belfast! ! !) on Monday, there were a number of protesters, to be sure. But I didn’t see a single torch, pitchfork, or gibbet.

Meanwhile, politicians in this country do everything in their power to make sure that not only gay weddings, but any law or resolution that sanctions same-sex relationships, is a crime against the state. You are made to feel like a felon (or worse, as though you are un-American) for wanting to visit your partner if he’s incapacitated and winds up in a hospital bed.

There was a long article in last Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine about a two-woman couple from Fredericksburg, Virginia who left the state for Maryland because of that state’s restrictive laws against same-sex couples. The reporter had an online exchange with readers after the story appeared, and along with the expected rage from those who questioned why so much space and time was wasted on a same-sex couple (and, as well, the surprising numbers of Virginians who expressed their regret that the couple left the state) were a few messages from readers who said that they knew gay people and thought they were “nice” but didn’t see why they should be making such a fuss.

I can actually muster more comprehension for the messages from the people who said that all gays currently living in Virginia should pack their bags and leave the commonwealth (with good riddance).

Mike Cox: Republican Hypocrite

Before I forget, I didn’t fail to notice that the « Fascist Michigan attorney general who is trying to strip faithful Michigan couples of all their health insurance is himself an adulterer »:

‘Attorney General Mike Cox announced Wednesday he had an extramarital affair and accused the state’s most famous attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, of threatening to expose him unless Cox dropped an investigation into Fieger’s alleged violation of campaign-finance laws. “A number of years ago, I was unfaithful to my wife, Laura,” an emotional Cox said at a news conference, as his teary-eyed wife stood by his side in his Detroit office. “What I did was inexcusable and it was entirely my fault.” Cox said he told his wife about the affair in 2003, three months after he took office.’

Interesting how the family values crowd was stone cold silent when, according to the Leviticus that they love to quote, they should be throwing stones.

Despicable. Disgusting.

Typical.

Now Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Benefits!

Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »:

‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples filed suit against the state in March after Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D), acting on the advice of Attorney General Mike Cox ®, terminated domestic partner benefits that had been won by state unions. One partner of each of the 22 couples works for the state of Michigan.
‘In a legal opinion to the governor, Cox said that the constitutional amendment passed by voters last year bars all public employers from providing domestic partner benefits. But, although Granholm removed the benefits from the contracts she disagreed with Cox’s interpretation of the amendment and in July she entered the case on the side of the gay couples. Cox was obligated to argue the case against benefits as Attorney General. “Health care benefits are not among the statutory rights or benefits of marriage,” Judge Draganchuk said in her written ruling. “An individual does not receive health benefits for his or her spouse as a matter of legal right upon getting married.”
‘The twenty-two couples were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Today’s ruling affirms what we’ve believed all along — Michigan voters never intended to take health insurance away from families,” said ACLU attorney Deborah LaBelle. The case was closely watched by municipalities across the state. After telling Gov. Granholm the benefits were illegal, Cox warned several cities that benefits packages they were contemplating were also illegal. Cox’s office has not said if it will appeal the ruling.’
—365Gay.com

I’ll bet the pig appeals. And I hope he and his ilk get slapped on their asses again.

(Or was that all too passionate?)

Rainy Day Thoughts

• Attack of the killer allergy eyeball reddeners today. Got so bad I had to make a run to CVS in the rain to get eyedrops …
• Love the rain, but am missing the sunshine. Looked at my very white arms last night and remembered how tan I was after spending time three times in Palm Springs last spring/summer …
• Can’t go anywhere without leashless dogs running up to us, even the deep woods of Mitchell Scarlett Park wasn’t immune. As we finished the walk, the storm system began coming in and the wind turned sharper and more northerly and the clouds came back. I love rainy spring weather, but the cabin fever/lack of sun is beginning to get to me. What can I say? I’m a southwestern boy more at home in Nuevo Mexico …
• Dumping almost a full pitcher of black cherry koolaid on the kitchen floor and refrigerator is a sticky mess, as Frank found out today …
• Beagles enjoyed the walk in the woods, but he’s kind of limping a bit tonight. Old age/incipient arthritis/lack of exercise is the culprit. He’s tired but reasonably happy now …
• Watched The Caine Mutiny, which I hadn’t seen before, this afternoon. Fabulous. More on the « Cinema ‘blog » …
• Apparently, a Fox News/World Net Daily-spouting fascist is running things at my old newspaper, the Drunken Banana, if a quick read of the editorial page is any indication …
• Need a real job with real money …
• Called UM financial aid yesterday, they said it’ll be another 4-6 weeks now that they have my RFF, which I didn’t know I needed to submit …