Update on Ted Haggard's gay "cure"

AP:

Asked whether he could define his sexual identity, Haggard said: "The stereotypical boxes don't work for me. My story's got some gray areas in it. And, of course, I'm sad about that but it's the reality."

Never thought I'd heard an evangelical say that the concepts of gay and straight are simply stereotypes. Read More......

ABC News runs Mormon puff piece

Did anybody else catch the ridiculously yellow Mormon puff piece that ABC News ran last night? One of the saddest excuses for journalism ever. ABC was invited by the Mormons to come visit, without a camera, some new small temple they built in some town in Utah. Yes, are you getting the "news" angle of the story - come visit a small church in the middle of nowhere, and don't bring a camera - stop the presses! So ABC's Dan Harris dutifully showed up and did a broadcast parroting the Mormon's own talking points about how they were just a bit player in Prop 8 in California (they provided half the funding and actually turned it around from a loss to a victory, but who's counting). And for all you Jews, you're gonna love this one - the Mormons, ABC informs us, offer everyone the choice of converting to Mormonism on death. Yes, that "choice," ABC failed to mention, is one of the biggest controversies surrounding the Mormon church for over a decade. They don't let you choose to convert, they forcibly convert you against your will, and have specifically been targeting dead Jewish Holocaust victims for forced conversion - and, even better, they promised to stop converting dead Holocaust victims to Mormonism, and then secretly kept doing it. ABC didn't bother mentioning any of this. All they did was parrot the Mormon line. And show us video of a new Mormon temple in the middle of nowhere. Now that's news. Read More......

We now have a mobile / iPhone / Blackberry version of AMERICAblog

Thanks to a helpful post by Taegan Goddard, I was able to create a mobile version of AMERICAblog for your iPhone, Blackberry, or other cell phone. You'll notice a new image/link at the top of the main column that says "Mobile Version." Simply pull up the blog on your phone, click that link, and it will take you to the mobile version of the blog.



Then just save that new version in your bookmarks (it will be a different URL than our main AMERICAblog URL), and in the future you can pull up a stripped down version of AMERICAblog with hardly any delay on your cell phone. And for iPhone users, we even have a cool icon if you save the bookmark to your Home Screen. Read More......

Robert Rubin resigns from Citigroup

Please tell me this doesn't mean he's lining himself up to join the already right wing economic team of the Obama administration. It already looks as though Obama has hired everyone who used to work for Rubin (including Summers and Geithner) so nothing would be a shock at this point. Rubin's best Bart Simpson "I didn't do it" shtick was wearing thin as Citi's fortunes crumbled and he claimed to have no idea what was going on despite sitting on its board. We really could have used a fresh new team to deal with this economy but apparently change will have to wait for another administration. Read More......

Obama recommits to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy

While Obama has already said he opposes the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, which basically bans gay and lesbian Americans from serving in the US military, this reiteration of that position is significant. Yesterday, the Obama transition team chose to include a question about DADT in their weekly online Q&A; with incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. In that Q&A;, Gibbs reads a question from Thaddeus in Lansing, Michigan. Thaddeus asks:

"Is the new administration going to get rid of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy?"

Gibbs answers:

"Thaddeus, you don't hear a politician give a one-word answer much, but it's 'Yes.'"

Why is this significant? Because they affirmatively chose to include that question in this week's Q&A; - it didn't just come up by chance. That means a number of things.

First, Obama is showing, I believe, that he feels the need to reiterate his support for the civil rights of gay and lesbian Americans (I suspect in the wake of the Rick Warren fiasco, and expressions of concern from the gay community that gays were excluded from Obama's cabinet). That's good, as it shows that some of the recent disaffection by gay and lesbian Obama supporters has not gone unnoticed.

Second, It's one thing to make a promise during a campaign, it's quite another to reiterate that promise categorically after the election is over and at the very beginning of the new president's administration. Bill Clinton got into a lot of trouble by bringing up DADT at the beginning of his administration in 1992. A lot of that trouble was Clinton's own doing - Clinton walked into a buzz saw because he did not prepare for the obvious opposition he would face. You don't announce you're going to do something this revolutionary until you're ready for the blow-back, until you're ready to win - Clinton wasn't ready, and he got rolled. The natural impulse for Obama, or any politician, after watching what happened to Clinton, is to avoid gay rights in general, and to certainly not get into it at the beginning of your term (thus much of the concern gays and lesbians have had with Obama reaching out to Rick Warren and not including gays and lesbians in his cabinet). The fact that Obama chose to have Gibbs bring up DADT, and state categorically that he will repeal DADT, is therefore, in my eyes, significant. He didn't have to, but he did anyway.

Having said that, at some point words aren't enough. I sincerely hope the Obama team is preparing to actually lift the ban, and preparing for just how they're going to do it while avoiding the calamity that befell Clinton. They also need to figure out when they're going to do it. Right now, I suspect Obama feels the need to (understandably) focus on the economy, exclusively. But next year is a congressional election year, and the two years after that are presidential election years. All of that begs against addressing DADT, against making any controversial decisions on anything. Team Obama needs to prepare now for how they're going to lift the ban in a timely, successful fashion. And if they do, God bless 'em.

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Karl Rove sets the GOP Senate Strategy

Call me crazy, but I think it's going to be very difficult to be post-partisan and get all cozy with Republicans when the master of divisiveness, Karl Rove, is setting the GOP strategy. He's took the lead on the opposition to Eric Holder and the GOP Senators dutifully followed:

What was considered a smooth path to confirmation has recently been complicated as signs of hostility toward Holder have increased over the past month. Political operative Karl Rove and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for example, singled out the longtime Washington lawyer as the candidate who would face bruising questions.

"The attorney general nominee, Mr. Holder, has got serious questions to respond to with regard to his role in the . . . pardons at the end of the Clinton administration and some other matters," McConnell said yesterday. "Beyond that, I don't anticipate trouble for the new president's nominees."

This is a made up controversy, designed to show the new president that the 41 GOP Senators have some clout. Obama and the Democratic Senators need to roll them. Over and over and over. If McConnell wants to make this session about the GOP filibuster, let him try. But, the Democrats better make the GOP fail on this first one. Read More......

Obama lays out job projections expected from stimulus

In today's radio address, the president-elect released a new report, which details how many and what kinds of jobs will be created by an "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." Here's the video and excerpts are below:



Yesterday, we learned that the unemployment rate hit 7.2% and is only projected to go higher. Job creation is key to the economy turning around:

We’ll create nearly half a million jobs by investing in clean energy – by committing to double the production of alternative energy in the next three years, and by modernizing more than 75% of federal buildings and improving the energy efficiency of two million American homes. These made-in-America jobs building solar panels and wind turbines, developing fuel-efficient cars and new energy technologies pay well, and they can’t be outsourced.

We’ll create hundreds of thousands of jobs by improving health care – transitioning to a nationwide system of computerized medical records that won’t just save money, but save lives by preventing deadly medical errors. And we’ll create hundreds of thousands more jobs in education, equipping tens of thousands of schools with 21st century classrooms, labs and computers to help our kids compete with any worker in the world for any job.

We’ll put nearly 400,000 people to work by repairing our infrastructure – our crumbling roads, bridges and schools. And we’ll build the new infrastructure we need to succeed in this new century, investing in science and technology, and laying down miles of new broadband lines so that businesses across our nation can compete with their counterparts around the world.

This sounds great, of course. But, we still don't know what's actually in Obama's stimulus proposal. The tax portion, designed to solicit GOP support, got smacked around on Capitol Hill this week. We also don't know what will eventually pass in Congress. But, actual job creation is probably the best deliverable.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning. 10 more days.

The poem of the week is "How Many Nights" by Galway Kinnell. According to our poet blogger, Kinnell "writes about nature as well as any living poet."

Speaking of nature, I just checked the 10-day forecast for D.C. It only gets us through January 19th, but no storms are on the horizon -- so far. I'll keep checking obsessively (as will the approximately 2 million other people who will be standing on the mall.)

Okay, let's get started...

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Report on COBRA confirms what we already knew

It's too expensive. COBRA has never made much sense to me because if you have just lost your job, how are you going to find enough money for insurance? Where do you find a spare $1000+ per month to insure a family when you don't have a job? Sure, having easy access to health insurance is great but the costs - especially today - are well out of reach.

The cost of buying health insurance for unemployed Americans who try to purchase coverage through a former employer consumes 30 percent to 84 percent of standard unemployment benefits, according to a report released yesterday.

Because few people can afford that, the authors say, the result is a growing number of people being hit with the double whammy of no job and no health coverage.

In 1985, Congress passed legislation enabling newly unemployed Americans to extend their employer-based health insurance for up to 18 months. But under the program, known as COBRA, the individual must pay 102 percent of the policy's full cost.

Instead of cash handouts and yet another round of business tax deductions, solving problems like this ought to be considered first. It would be nice to think that our next President who ran on a campaign of change would actually target change instead of the same old, same old. Is that really asking for too much? Read More......

George goes free!

Not *that* George (who we hope will be facing charges soon enough) but George the 140 year old lobster. I'm not a vegetarian (it might even be illegal in France...not quite sure) and while others in France eat anything that runs, swims, flies, slithers or moves in any which way, but not something like this. No one would really want to eat such an old lobster anyway so who needs to tank circus? Long live George!

A 140-year-old lobster once destined for a dinner plate received the gift of life Friday from a Park Avenue seafood restaurant.

George, the 20-pound supercentenarian crustacean, was freed by City Crab and Seafood in New York City.

"We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace," said Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

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