In case anyone’s wondering what happened to the main site, all I can say is we’ll be back up as soon as we’ve successfully hidden our hosting company CEO’s body. In the meantime, enjoy some of the spam that’s piled up in the year since we shut this place down.

It a nice site collecting all info about Socks.
I use to buy different variety of socks and i need this information.
Thanks for your time to post this article.

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Baby name meaning and origin for Samirah

Description for the baby name Samirah, the origins of the name and its meaning

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Hey, very interesting post.

My written English is not so good so I write in German:

“Lieber den Spatz in der Hand, als die Taube auf dem Dach.”

Yours sincerely
Köln

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Hi

I see that you are also into the elections.
We can win the elections!
Just have a look on www.rightpeopleforthepresident.com
This powerful viral tool that can make the difference by involving voters for a reason can be in your blog by a simple copy-and-paste, as you insert any photo or text.
Your blog has the power to make the difference. Don’t miss this opportunity for this last week before the elections. Insert our candidate’s player in your blog in 1 minute.

Paul

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Born in 1950, I never knew what the word homosexual meant until I learned at age 18. At first, I didn’t believe that men would do that, it all sounded like a really bad joke to me. I am thankful that I was raised in a Christian family, Mom and Dad and Sister and myself. I was taught that God made man and woman, Adam and Eve, that he condemned men who did the nasty thing to death and in Romans, chapter one, still condemns the practice. Like any man, women are a temptation to me, at least that is natural. To look at a man with lust is incomprehensible to me. It requires a perverted way of looking at things, I guess that is why it is called a perversion. This isn’t a popular way of looking at things, but I am definitely on God’s side about this one!

Um…holy shit. I think that last guy may have been serious.

Update: So the error message at the mothership changed. That may be a good sign.

I’ll be leaving this one up as archives, but closing down comments tomorrow.

Please go to the new Pandagon at http://pandagon.net/.

Here’s the new RSS feed.

Here’s a new post at the new site asking for feedback on the redesign.

We’re taking a short break tonight and throughout tomorrow to move the website over to the redesigned place. Hopefully by Thursday morning we’ll be up and running at the URL pandagon.net. If you’re using the Blogsome bookmarks, please switch back to pandagon.net. It will be directing to this website but switch over sometime tomorrow or Thursday. You can keep leaving comments here overnight.

For those who make the switch, the RSS feed and other important information will be there. I will post updates here in the meantime until everyone has made the switch over.

I’m with Mighty Ponygirl: This article by Rachel Shukert about how Rock Band saved her marriage was a nightmare. I enjoy writers willing to hang out all their personality flaws for the world to see, but it’s also amazing to me how some of them can describe themselves so well and not realize that these are the sort of soul-destroying personality flaws that will cause them massive problems. Shukert realizes, to a degree, that she’s a nagging, clingy mess, but she doesn’t seem to realize that this is something that is a major problem that can’t be fixed with a video game.

It’s too bad, because I was pretty eager to read the story, as I am both a fan of the video game in question and have a fantasy rock band with my boyfriend called Shitbird. We also have a band with a rotating cast of friends called Cleveland Steamers.* I can testify to the fact that there’s something very socially redeeming about the game. But Great Cat, even correcting for hyperbole, Shukert has it all screwed up and it wasn’t a breezy, fun read. She was making me mad.

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Hat tip to Brian at BlueNC for this news — homobigot Vernon Robinson, who tried and failed to unseat Congressman Brad Miller in the 13th District race here in 2006, has picked up something as a consolation prize — the “Willie” award for Worst Political Advertisement, given by progressive thinktank Growth & Justice.

Here’s what Vern actually put on the air to receive the honor; he does the NC GOP proud:

And a snippet the post I did back when that ad was first released (March 2006) is below the fold.
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I can’t recommend Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America enough, and I’m honored to be asked to be a part of the TPMCafe Book Club discussion of it. Happily, mine is the first post up after Rick’s: Overcoming The Spite Vote.

Yesterday at TPMCafe, Rick Perlstein kicked off a week-long examination of his new book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. I’ve been asked to join this week’s cafe (a fun departure from writing about politics through a feminist lens), and I recommend checking it out, because the book is wonderful. And very relevant to today’s post topic: “Reagan Democrats“. The seeds of creation for this group of voters means they’re probably more “Nixon Democrats”, a name that would at least show how fruitless getting them back into the fold might be.

Ezra’s post gently puts to rest the ancient Democratic hobbyhorse of lamenting the loss of that percentage of white working class voters that long ago quit voting their economic interests and started voting against uppity black people and women, and against the “liberal elite”. Interestingly, the “elite” label doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to liberals—the lower you go on the income ladder, the more liberal you tend to be statistically speaking:



So why do Republicans win when (because of Republican policies no less), the number of people falling below the cutoff line greatly outnumbers the people falling above it? In part, because the higher you get up the income ladder, the more likely you are to vote. Also, there’s racial issues (gender a bit less, because while women are more liberal than men, they also vote more regularly, so it probably evens out):

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This is getting so tired now — lower the discourse, then trot out with a lame apology that doesn’t address the horror of what was said. Faux News contributor Liz Trotta doesn’t even attempt to sound sincere with this bullsh*t mea culpa:

“I am so sorry about what happened yesterday with that lame attempt at humor…I just really fell over myself in making it appear that I wished Barack Obama harm or any other candidate for that matter. I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended. It’s a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes in saying things we wish we hadn’t said.”

Let’s take a look at what she said that got her into hot water. I don’t see any other candidates mentioned in her assassination joke:

“and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh..um..Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor]….well both if we could [laughing]”

Please.

(10:40 AM: Wow, people — is this topic so radioactive that no one is willing to comment on it? I’d actually like some feedback.)

I’ve laid off commenting about the dustup regarding the announcement of the 55 blogs selected for the DemConvention State Blogger Corps over the last few days in the hope of receiving more information regarding the program and handling of the fallout. There were actually two points of contention about the selection process that have been covered unevenly in the blogosphere.

1) Lack of racial diversity in the state pools selected (given the overall composition of the Dem party), and the fact that there is a different level of access to the state delegation given to these blogs on the floor at the Dem National Convention versus the general blogger pool, which will be announced this week;

2) The charge that there were political factors that went into the decision-making process for state blogs that resulted in highly qualified state blogs not making the final cut. This was the suggestion that state parties were consulted and were able to give thumbs up or down to specific blogs that may have been hard on the state parties.

Item number two has already been heavily covered in the progressive blogosphere, while outside of black blogs, the first item has been largely and curiously ignored by the top-tier blogs. As is the norm on such things, my position seems to straddle that group of progressive blogs. On the one hand, I think the problem is due to 1) an inability of state blogs to include more minority contributors; 2) some may not have thought about a lack of minority perspective on state and local issues as important; 3) those state blogs have truly tried by haven’t seen interest from POC who are well-versed in state and local issues who are able to/want to contribute to a state blog.

On the other hand, some of the black/brown bloggers have seen the selection results and have tossed “Jim Crow” charges out there — meaning overt, purposeful exclusion. I don’t see purposeful exclusion, what I see is a DNCC that wanted blogs represented at the convention in an unprecedented way, but was unable to see or fully address the minority representation problem (and we’re not only talking about racial minorities) it was going to create with its selection system.

The bottom line is that the lack of minority participation at the state blogger level is real, and it is a problem for the Democratic Party as well as the blogosphere.

However, both reactions aren’t particularly helpful in terms of improving dialogue long term — the defense shields go up, and nothing positive usually comes of this. It’s been frustrating to see it all unfold.

I was contacted by Aaron Myers, the director of online communications for the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee, and spoke with him a couple of days ago to ask him about the credentialing process, the details in level of access, and some logistics, in an effort to get some information on the record. My notes are below the fold.
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A completely politics-free thread for fun that folks are enjoying over at my place as we close out a holiday weekend here. Share your preferences (and why).

Peanut butter: chunky, creamy or don’t eat it/allergic?
Bread: white or wheat?
Steak: rare, medium, well-done, or no meat?
Ice Cream: chocolate, vanilla or mixes (Cookies n Cream, Rocky Road, Butter Pecan, etc.)?

More below the fold.
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Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr has secured the nomination of the Libertarian Party for president, and this news has no doubt has given the GOP a big case of agita.

“I’m sure we will emerge here with the strongest ticket in the history of the Libertarian Party,” Barr stated in his victory speech shortly after being selected as the Party’s nominee. “I want everybody to remember that we only have 163 days to win this election. We cannot waste one single day.”

…”We’re proud to present to the American voters Bob Barr as our presidential nominee,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis. “While Republicans and Democrats will fight for their own power in November, Libertarians will fight for Americans. Bob Barr is one of the strongest candidates in the Party’s 37-year history, and we look for him to have an enormous impact in the 2008 race. Republicans and Democrats have good reason to fear a candidate like Barr, who refuses to accept the ‘business-as-usual’ attitude of the current political establishment. Americans want and need another choice, and that choice is Bob Barr.”

The GOP already knows John McCain’s support is soft (to be charitable) with the lunatic Base, so an opportunity to cast a protest vote is a real problem. Barr supported Bush’s drug war and authored the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 while a congressman; out of office, he’s reversed his position on those issues, as well as lobbied for the legalization of medicinal use of marijuana.

I decided to venture over to the swamps of Freeperland to see what the knuckle-dragging crowd thought of Barr’s nomination. It’s after the jump.
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I’ve been hanging onto this all weekend, because it’s a real Monday morning bit of hilarity. It’s also a good indicator of how the concept of the boycott, wielding so powerfully when used strategically by the civil rights movement, has really devolved into a temper tantrum that’s less about effecting change and more about the boycotter preening over her moral superiority. Observe Rachel Ray’s outfit in a new ad for Dunkin Donuts:

To ordinary people, this is an example of someone wearing the confusing combination of a lightweight summer shirt and a scarf. There are two major possibilities here. One is that this is yet another example of the fashion trend fascists trying to push a stupid idea on the public to see who buys into it. Considering that said fascists have successfully convinced a handful of women to dress like this:

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(UPDATE: See Francis’s take here and here. Also read the post over at A Slanted Truth about why these assassination remarks cut deep.)

How on earth do these sick people at Fox News get away with sh*t like this? Here is Liz Trotta, brought on to comment about Hillary Clinton’s ill-conceived remarks, and Trotta not only blurts out “Osama”, but laughs and “corrects” herself, suggesting it would be a good idea to knock both off. My god.

“and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh..um..Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor]….well both if we could [laughing]”

This is yet another example of filing the edges off of the egregious casual mention of assassination, so that those offended and concerned about such casual talk are eventually the ones perceived with a hangup. It is a caustic and disgusting tactic frequently used by Fox, Limbaugh and the rest. It surfaced a while ago in regards to overt racism in the conservative MSM (see my post Filing the edges off of racism). Watch for more of this crap.

More here.

Hat tip, floozy.

When the United States Supreme Court invalidated all state sodomy laws in the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling it didn’t take those state laws off the books. Last night in my state, two men, in what appears to be a domestic dispute/sexual assault case that occurred in private, were charged by the police under the North Carolina’s ridiculous “crimes against nature” law (CAN). From the Raleigh N&O:

Raleigh police first charged Nelson Keith Sloan, 40, of Grand Manor Court, who called them to his apartment about dawn, saying he had been attacked.

Police later filed the same charge against Ryan Christopher Flynn, 25, of Glen Currin Drive. They also charged Flynn with simple assault for biting Sloan. And they charged him with communicating threats by telling Sloan he was going to disembowel him and show him his innards.

“This looks like a case of a consensual act that may have gotten out of hand,” said Raleigh police Capt. T.D. Hardy. “The law is still on the books. Our detectives got involved in it last night and decided this was the best thing to do. What the D.A.’s office will do with it, I don’t know.”

Sloan, however, said he was the victim of an assault. “I didn’t allow anything,” he said Saturday after being reached at home by phone. “They knew it and turned it around and arrested me. I have never been so humiliated in all my life. It’s just awful.”

And, in the ultimate outrage - the police did not charge Flynn with sexual assault. As you read, the police captain 1) doesn’t believe a sexual crime occurred; and 2) doesn’t have a problem with arresting the men under this law, when everyone knows a heterosexual couple would never be charged with CAN.

More below the fold.
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Once in awhile, you have a moment where you really see how the Equal Rights Amendment would, contrary to the claims of opponents, have a positive effect on our laws. Lily Ledbetter would have won her case, I suspect, because even the most law-bending reactionary justices would have had trouble denying her claims. Same story with Gonzales v. Carhart, or any abortion restriction really, since they’re all based on the idea that women are second class citizens who can legally have fewer rights than men, and in the case of Carhart, can be treated as mentally inferior as a class to men. I have to wonder if it would make it much easier to challenge abstinence-only education in schools, since the materials invariably come from religious organizations with anti-woman and homophobic agendas.

Maybe not. These groups do try to scrub some of their more offensive beliefs about gays’ and women’s inferiority out of the textbooks, with varying degrees of success. Still, it’s a strange situation, as if our government was accepting history textbooks written by SPLC-recognized hate groups, so long as they make a half-assed effort to cover up their more odious racist assumptions. Because once you get into the thick of the Christianist world, where they’re letting their hair down, their jaw-dropping ideas about women (basically, that they’re property) will shock even the hardened wingnut watchers.

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The party’s over for the GOP, my friends. This race is the Democrats’ to lose (and what’s scary is we’re fully capable of doing so).

A planned mega-fundraiser for the GOP, featuring President Bush and John McCain, has now been scaled back in the face of a daunting problem: Too few people actually wanted to buy tickets.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, fundraiser set for this Tuesday in the city’s convention center failed to sell enough tickets, leading to fears that the anti-Bush protesters might end up outnumbering actual attendees.

What’s the new plan now that the huge convention center can’t be filled? To hold gatherings in private residences away from media prying eyes in the Phoenix area.

Datarock - Fa Fa Fa from nettwerkmusic on Vimeo.

Hat tip to my internet Luddite friend Kiki for burning this band’s disc for me. To quote him: “Like Devo meets disco!”

Nina Simone remixes, which never get old:

(Hat tip.)

Jeremy of Good As You has the screenshots of the creative but too-late attempt by Save California (from gay marriage)’s Randy Thomasson to remove some serious sickness that was on his web site.

On it he compared ordering county clerks in California to marry same sex couples to a Nazi officer being ordered to gas the Jews during World War II. It’s so disgusting that someone probably told him it was a bit of a bad idea to run this, so rewrote the section — but not before the original had been cached by Google. Oops.

As we all know, a dump of less-than-favorable information always happens on a Friday, and something of this magnitude — 71-year-old cancer survivor and war torture survivor John McCain’s health records — happened on the Friday of a holiday weekend — and the terms of review of them were curiously restricted. (Newsweek):

During his first presidential run, eight years ago, McCain disclosed hundreds of pages of records to reporters as he sought then to counter what aides called a “whisper campaign” questioning his mental fitness. In those records, medical personnel concluded that his years in prison, including solitary confinement, left him with no psychological wounds. Aides said McCain has had no mental evaluations in the past eight years.

This time, a small group of reporters reviewed 1,173 pages of medical documents that span 2000 to 2008 over several hours in a conference room at a resort just outside Phoenix and a few miles from the posh Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, where McCain receives most of his medical care under a pseudonym — which reporters were asked not to disclose.

By the way, we never learned in February that McCain had yet another cancerous growth removed from his face:

McCain’s most recent exams show a range of health issues common in aging: He frequently has precancerous skin lesions removed, and in February had an early stage squamous cell carcinoma, an easily cured skin cancer, removed. He had benign colon growths called polyps taken out during a routine colonoscopy in March.

The cancer issue, while a relevant health issue to consider when electing someone to the highest office in the land, is not nearly as critical as the fact Sen. John McCain hasn’t had a mental evaluation in eight years. More below the fold.
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The Skepticality podcast has been doing a real bang-up job of covering the controversy over “Intelligent Design” propaganda piece Expelled, mostly be interviewing the various scientists touched directly by the controversy. The most recent interview was one of the most frustrating—Dr. Randy Olson, who moved from being a biologist to being a filmmaker. Dr. Olson has a lot of criticisms of people he calls “evolutionists”, but I got the feeling he was more interested in knocking heads than really being right, and he might do well to reconsider some of his own ideas. Even though he agrees with people who accept the theory of evolution, he insists throughout the interview in using the term “evolutionist”. This is short of calling someone a “Darwinist”, but it’s still falling for a right wing frame. The right wing frame is to suggest the the controversy is over a clash between two belief systems of equal evidential validity: Christianity and “Darwinism”, much like their other favorite clash, between Christianity and Islam. And that the battle is merely to be won on faith. But evolutionary theory is not a belief system, and nor is it necessarily in conflict with Christianity, since most mainstream Christian churches accept it the same as they accept that the Earth goes around the Sun, contrary to Biblical claims otherwise. It’s a well-established theory with no real evidence against it, and mountains of evidence for it. Mind-boggling, impossible to tally amounts of evidence for it. Using terms like “evolutionist” undermines this reality. Dr. Olson would not call people who accept the reality of gravity “gravitationalists”, so why buy into the right wing frame on this one?

Obviously, you can’t just call the defenders of evolutionary theory biologists, because more than biologists defend it—the larger scientist community and non-scientists like me are avid defenders of the importance of accepting reality. And of course, this group has religious and non-religious people in it. So what to call them? I suggest “reality-based community”, which has more syllables than “evolutionists”, but rolls off the tongue more easily. The best part about it is that it reframes the debate in more accurate terms: As one between people who accept evidence and appreciate knowledge, and people who insist on viewing the world through a magical lens.

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KO was overwrought on Friday, but what he said was spot on. What Hillary Clinton did by invoking Robert F. Kennedy’s late primary win (and, unnecessarily, assassination — for the second time in two months) to bolster her case for staying in the race is beyond the pale.

It became more so after the non-apology (the usual “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” and it didn’t at all address the context of assassination and Obama). It was more egregious that her comparison in the remarks to Bill’s 1992 race that she claimed wasn’t wrapped up until June, something she has also repeated, wasn’t even true.

While she said that he only wrapped up the nomination in June of that year, he was viewed as having secured it in March, when his last serious opponent dropped out.

FYI: The number of hate groups operating in this country has increased 48% since Bush took office. Taking what Clinton said lightly or as an indication of a moment of fatigue is not an option (for me, anyway).

Between the political dog whistles floated and denied over the course of the primary season by the Clinton campaign, and the overt statements by voters that race is an issue for them, you simply cannot ignore the first black man to be a serious contender for the presidency is a man with a target on his back and words do mean something — particularly coming from a candidate. That Senator Clinton’s campaign doesn’t care to or doesn’t want to admit what she said has an interpretation other than a slight to the Kennedy family is BS. We’re not talking about her believing she wants something horrible to befall her opponent, it’s the lack of discretion and judgment in raising the issue not once, but twice.

Sadly, our country is too sick and too incapable of dealing with the race-based hatred, ignorance and fear that has bubbled up during this primary season, and the reality is that we have a man willing to take the personal risk to run for president in spite of this.

And that is what Keith Olbermann addressed.

The transcript is here.
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[UPDATE: One of Homosexual and Homosexualist HQ most seasoned operatives, Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin, saw the unforgiveable leak of The Homosexual Activism Overview and took quick action. See below the fold.]

Someone’s going to get a spanking from me! I want to know who has turned over one of our top secret strategy documents to the fundie Alliance Defense Fund. Reader Karen in Kalifornia alerted me to the security breach; click the image to see what has been leaked from Homo Headquarters:

Here are the other documents that got away…

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Animal people looking for good organizations to give your money to, I beseech of you, please ignore PETA, who seems to spend most of their budget getting young women to get naked in public as publicity stunts. If you love both animals and people, look instead to less sexy but much more humane organizations like the Humane Society, who actually have done a bang-up job of using their issue of animal welfare to highlight the problem of domestic violence. From Salon, I see that the effort from organizations like the Humane Society, PAWS, the ASPCA, and the Humane Association (and no doubt many other animal organizations that don’t see the need to parade naked women around to make a point) to improve the public’s understanding of the link between animal abuse and domestic abuse have led to an article in O about the link.

For people who understand how domestic violence really works, this link is not surprising. Abusers use any leverage they can to terrorize their victims and break their will, and will happily resort to abusing and killing pets for that end. There’s also the added incentive of using the pet as leverage to keep your victim from escaping, because she knows that fleeing without or even with the pet might result in the abuser retaliating by killing her pet. In order to make pet safety less of a barrier to women fleeing abusive homes, the Humane Society has put together a list of 170 safe haven programs, where both the victim and her pets are cared for by the shelters, using various methods.

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Wow, talk about hardball. This was on CNN this AM, and it looks like the Clinton camp is tossing out some kind of not-so-veiled convention chaos blackmail card for the VP slot, and/or a way for the New York senator to have a face-saving exit strategy. The report from Suzanne Malveaux describes three scenarios being floated by people “inside Hillary’s inner circle.”

Scenario 1: Obama “ignores” Clinton and her supporters by offering the VP slot to someone else, which her camp sees as “a total dismissal of her” and is an unacceptable endgame that one Clintonista said could lead to open civil war within the party — and that this scenario is going to have consequences. This will allegedly manifest itself as women’s groups not willing to do any fundraising for Obama, and a tepid campaign by Hillary during the general campaign.

Scenario 2: Obama offers Hillary the VP slot, knowing she’ll turn it down.( Huh? This spin is weird. Why is there an assumption that she would turn it down?) The leaking Clinton camp description here is that option obviously isn’t acceptable to the Obama camp precisely because they believe she would accept, and the two camps don’t trust each other enough to see it a workable teaming.

Scenario 3: Meet and figure out some compromise for public consumption. The idea suggested here is that Obama’s campaign would cover Clinton’s enormous debt, or back her for the Senate Majority Leader position, even though the insiders have seen no indication that Hillary wants the job in the first place, since she’s still running to win.

Raw Story has the CNN video.

OK, given the fact that this is surfacing from the perspective of the Clinton campaign, what do you think the motivations are for offering up these particular scenarios that don’t really look plausible or workable (in that it benefits Obama as the prospective nominee)?

And in other, even more surreal news, Clinton invokes RFK’s assassination in a newspaper editorial board meeting to bring up “historical context” in terms of why she shouldn’t drop out before the primaries are over. WTF?
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Ten songs at random from your iPod or other MP3 playing device. Leave yours in comments.

1. “Peel Back The Moon, Beware”—Elf Power
2. “You Don’t Smile Anymore”—Mr. Suitcase
3. “Fire Sign”—The Gossip
4. “Country Feedback”—REM
5. “My Juvenile”—Bjork
6. “Teri Sadi”—DJ Rekha
7. “House of Cards”—Radiohead(this is who I was out of town to see last weekend
8. “You’re The Kind of Girl”—Mixel Pixel
9. “Girls On Film”—The Living End (Duran Duran cover)
10. “Crimes and Nightcalls”—Femme

I always liked this REM song the most of all of theirs. Stipe gets his voice to break in that perfect country break form. He does that in a lot, but in this song, the weepy nature of the break is absolutely perfect. Hank Williams would be impressed.

I usually hate the cell phone camera videos of concerts, but this one of The Gossip doing “Fire Sign” really captures how great one of their shows is:

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Ah, Rick Santorum, returning from his anti-”Islamofacism” post-Senate efforts to familiar homo-hate territory. He’s back in the news, penning a ridiculous op-ed in the Philly Inquirer, “The Elephant in the Room: A wake-up call on gay marriage after ‘03 alarm went unheeded.”

Bigot! Hate-monger! Homophobe!

Those were just a few of the terms hurled my way in 2003 when I said that the Supreme Court’s Texas sodomy decision opened the door to the redefinition of marriage.

When I wasn’t ducking the epithets, I was being laughed at, mocked, and given the crazy-uncle-at-the-holidays treatment by the media. Or I was being told I should resign from my leadership post by some Senate colleagues.

Five years later, do I regret sounding the alarm about marriage? No.

I’m just saddened that time has proved right those of us who worried about the future of marriage as the union of husband and wife, deeply rooted not only in our traditions, our faiths, but in the facts of human nature: as Pope Benedict said, “The cradle of life and love,” connecting mothers and fathers to their children.

(Cue epithets: Bigot! Hate-monger! Homophobe!)

The latest distressing news came last week in California. The state Supreme Court there ruled, 4-3, that same-sex couples can marry.

In doing so, four judges rejected a statute that passed in a referendum with 61 percent of the vote that defined marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

And look, he’s worried that the elimination of discrimination will make all of the heterosupremacists look back at the good old days when homos were on the run.

Let me go out on another limb here and make another crazy prediction. Within 10 years, clergy will be sued or indicted for preaching on certain Bible passages dealing with homosexuality and churches, and church-related organizations will lose government contracts and even their tax-exempt status.

The California judges also ruled, for the first time in American legal history, that sexual orientation is just like race.

The California court just declared that those of us who see marriage as the union of husband and wife are the legal equivalent of racists. And openly racist groups and individuals can be denied government benefits because of their views, including professional licenses (attorney, physicians, psychiatrists, marriage counselors), accredited schools, and tax-exempt status for charities.

Have fun with the rest.

(UPDATE: Now that he’s going to be the GOP’s nominee, John McCain finally “discovered” how radioactive Rod Parsley is and repudiated him as well. There will definitely be a fundie eruption over this one.)

Today John McCain finally gave the boot to batsh*t fundie Pastor John Hagee of the 17,000-member Cornerstone Church in Texas after audio was released of the televangelist saying that Hitler had been sent by God to help Jews reach the Promised Land via the Holocaust. This was nothing new, however, so one wonders what rock the Arizona senator and his staff have been hiding under:

[I]n his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown”, Hagee proposed the theory that “anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves — the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive.” He also wrote that “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

Of course it would be interesting to know why this particular insanity crossed the line for McCain, since he had previously refused to reject the endorsement of Armegeddon proponent Hagee, who has condemned Catholics, gays, women, blacks and more from the pulpit and on video.

We’ve been blogging about the juicy-mouthed Patriot Pastor for a long time now. Apparently this influential nutbag has finally caught fire on the blogs.

More below the fold.
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You’re doing it wrong.

Saw this ad at Salon. I like Laura Dern, so I may have to figure out how to operate the DVR thingamabob to record this.