Open thread - chastity singalong

And now, a message about abstinence:

"Boys, keep it in your pants...keep your clothes on, keep your clothes on...wait till you're married to get it on."
-- Robert Breaud, "Abstinence" via GodTube 

Hat tip, Calling All Wingnuts. 

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The gay-bashing fundie caravan heads to Florida

Oh boy, you folks down there in the Sunshine state better be prepared for the fundie invasion ahead. The best and brightest of the professional right-wing fundamentalist fearmongerer set are coming to "inform and empower involved Christian citizenship," according to its web site.

Tampa will host the Family Impact Summit, which will feature Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, failed Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer, the American Family Association's Don Wildmon, the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land, Katherine Harris (just when we thought we'd seen the last of her!), Ohio vote vacuumer Ken Blackwell, Bob Knight of the Media Research Center, as well as "ex-gay" promoters Nancy Heche (actress Anne's mom), and the "ex-gay-for-pay" President of Exodus International, Alan Chambers.

There will be no fewer than six panels on homosexuality (Homosexuality & Ministry, Homosexuality & Youth, and the Homosexual Agenda are covered on Saturday and Sunday). Ah, our friend Bishop Harry ("Obama's misinformed") Jackson is in that motley crew.

As Right Wing Watch reports:

In between the gay-bashing, there will also be panels on "Christian Citizenship" and "Community Decency," as well as keynote addresses from Bauer, Perkins, Ken Blackwell, and Harry Jackson. What you won't find at this summit, as of yet, is GOP presidential candidates – even though most of them are reportedly scheduled to be attending the "Values Voter Debate" in Fort Lauderdale on September 17, which is being hosted by a separate, but not mutually exclusive, group of influential right-wing leaders.

The debate is being sponsored by the people who brought us the "Values Voters' Contract With Congress," which was itself launched at Vision America's "War on Christian and Values Voters Conference" in 2006 and supported by right-wing stalwarts such as Phyllis Schlafly, Alan Keyes, Lou Sheldon, Janet Folger, D. James Kennedy, Rod Parsley, and others.

You can watch the promotional video here. The conference organizers have made sure to provide travel pointers to "clean hotels" that are free of pay-for-play porn on the TVs. Read More......

So is McConnell criticizing Bush for sucking up to Sarkozy?

I mean, the GOP leader in the US Senate is criticizing Europe - maligning Europe, actually - only days after the new French president is invited for lots of private buddy-buddy sessions with George Bush. Bush seems to have made Sarkozy his new best friend. So then what are we to make of Mitch McConnell blasting anyone and everyone who would associate with "Old Europe?" In the grand scheme of Republican hate speech and bigotry, the only thing they have going for them any more, it doesn't get any more "Old Europe" than the French. Yet, it's the French who Bush have now embraced as, I'd argue, his potentially new best buddy in Europe, if not anywhere (he just lost Tony Blair).

So is Mitch McConnell implicitly blasting George Bush, and what kind of leadership and maturity does it show to malign the French head of state only days after he came to our country to visit our own president?

Not quite leadership material, that Mitch McConnell. Not to mention, the most inventive idea he could come up with is to plagiarize someone else's comments from years ago. It's a new world, Senator McConnell. The same old Republican talking points - the ones that lost you the Senate - just won't cut it. America voted for change. Read More......

Hey Giuliani, leave MY family alone

Let me get this straight. Rudy Giuliani can pontificate about MY family. He can retract his support for gay civil unions because of his judgment of the worth of my family. But when we look at Giuliani's family, in order to discern his family values, that's off limits.

Then there's Mitt Romney. He's running as the religious right candidate. He wants America to live under religious law. But don't ask Mitt about his own religion, Mormonism - the religion he's going to use as a basis for all those religious laws he's promising to pass. Oh no.

The extremists running the Republican party have two sets of values. The ones they live under, and the ones they expect YOU to live under. They spend like drunken sailors, but they expect you to tighten your belt. They send our troops off to wars based on a lie, without the proper equipment, and you hate the troops. They have more divorces and marriages and affairs than Zsa Zsa Gabor, but you're the threat to family values. And September 11 happens under their watch, but you're the one who's weak on terror.

Family values? I'd like to know if today's Republicans have ANY values. Read More......

Army suicides at highest level since Gulf War

Mission accomplished. Support our troops. The surge is working. Those slogans ring hollow over and over -- and now this.

Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest since the 102 suicides in 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War.

...Last year, "Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts," the report said.

...Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs were factors motivating the soldiers to commit suicide, according to the report.

"In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed" in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, it said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves.

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Abandon ship - Tony Snow's ready to pack his bags

He says that he can't go the distance with Dear Leader -- it's all about the Benjamins. (via Think Progress):

I've already made it clear I'm not going to be able to go the distance, but that's primarily for financial reasons. I've told people when my money runs out, then I've got to go.

Snow also noted that he expects "probably a couple" of other resignations are in the wind.

I'm sure Faux News will [officially] welcome him back into the fold. Read More......

Senator Reid blasts Bush attempt to kill Petraeus appearance before Congress

From Harry Reid:

"The White House's effort to prevent General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker from testifying openly and candidly before Congress about the situation in Iraq is unacceptable. Not only does it contradict the law President Bush himself signed in May, but it appears to be yet another politically driven attempt to avoid giving Congress and the American people an honest and open assessment of a war we can all see is headed in the wrong direction.

"From the very beginning of this war, the Bush Administration has refused to level with the American people about its flawed policy. It has instead done everything in its power to escape accountability and mislead us about the reality on the ground. The result: an open-ended civil war that has taken nearly 4,000 American soldiers' lives and an Iraqi government that refuses to take responsibility for its own country.

"If the President is going to continue to ask American soldiers to fight in this civil war, ask taxpayers to spend $10 billion each month to fund this war and ask the American people for patience as he conducts this war, then those closest to the situation on the ground must give Congress and the American people a frank and honest account of this war free of White House political spin."

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Rudy and Romney. If it's Thursday, they're anti-gay.

Rudy and Romney are campaigning in New Hampshire today. Lately, there's been some controversy surrounding their description of public service. Romney stepped in it when he said his sons were serving the country by campaigning for him. Rudy got in trouble when he said he was basically a 9/11 rescue worker, so all those emergency responders who raced to the World Trade Center minutes after it collapsed, and now have the September 11 equivalent of Black Lung Disease, should just shut up, per Rudy. Both have now tried to spin their way out.

If Rudy and Romney want to meet some true American heroes, people who truly want to serve their country, they should stop by the Human Rights Campaign's Legacy of Service Tour, which is also in New Hampshire today. The tour is part of the campaign to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and is comprised of several vets who have left the military because of the bigoted, dangerous policy.

Both Rudy and Romney want to keep DADT. Funny thing is that both of them used to be supporters of gay rights. Big supporters of gay rights (some of us think they still are, but they're just flip-flopping to curry favor with the far-right that now controls the Republican party). Rudy used to dress in drag and lived for a while with a gay male couple. Romney used to brag that he was more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy. Then both men decided to run for president as Republicans and poof! - or should I say pooftah - both men suddenly found God, and he was a Southern Baptist.

Anyway, back to the tour. Unlike any of Romney's sons - you know, the ones who are making as much a sacrifice as our troops in Iraq by traveling around in a bus campaigning for dad - HRC's Eric Alva went to Iraq. He was the first American injured in the war. He's in New Hampshire today and has some questions for Rudy and Romney:

I call on Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney to justify their support for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ when our nation is at war. Please explain to the 60,000 gay and lesbian troops on active duty why you seek to dishonor their service. For these candidates running to be the next commander in chief to dishonor the service of men and women standing on the streets of Baghdad and serving around the globe is shameful, and it jeopardizes national security. How can you expect to be the next president of the United States, to represent all the people of our country, and support this discriminatory policy that denies people the right to be who they are and serve openly in the armed forces?

Rudy and Romney won't answer Eric Alva or any of the other soldiers on the Legacy of Service tour. Eric and the other soldiers simply want to serve their country, but Romney, Giuliani and the other Republicans say no because it's what the far-right of the Republican part wants to hear. Rudy and Romney don't care if we have a shortage of troops. They don't care if we have a shortage of Arabic linguists. They don't care if the next 9/11 happens because we haven't translated crucial intelligence that is just sitting on some desk in Washington waiting to be examined. Rudy and Romney are now anti-gay - nudge nudge wink wink - so they support Don't Ask Don't Tell, to hell with what's best for America and our national security. Read More......

(Me on) Hitchens on al Qaeda in Iraq

(Apologies in advance, as this is a little longer than I usually prefer, but occasionally the Big Lies need to be debunked. Back to regularly scheduled brevity next time, I promise.)

While I'm hating on Hitchens, it's worth pointing out that his inane review of Harry Potter wasn't even the worst thing he published that day. In Slate, he embarrasses himself further with a profoundly misbegotten analysis of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Hitchens may have been a great thinker at one point, but that time has long passed; what he is now, rather than a sharp analyst, is a sharp arguer. Without the benefit of actually being right on the facts, a skilled debater can still make a case by setting the argument on his or her own terms, skewing or framing the question so wrong becomes right and the ridiculous appears to make sense. There are few better than Hitchens at rigging an argument in this way, and he does it with frequency (and relatively impunity) on Iraq. He argued yesterday that it is a "self-evident fact" that so-called "al Qaeda in Iraq" is "a branch of al Qaeda itself." I suppose he claims it's "self-evident" because, well, the words match. One would think a professed disciple of Orwell wouldn't stoop to such foolishness, but there it is nonetheless.

Al Qaeda proper attacked us on 9/11, al Qaeda is responsible for various terrorism in the Middle East and beyond, and it is a funded, organized, and hierarchical -- if decentralized -- entity that looks to export violence against, primarily, the U.S. and Arab regimes. I'm leaving out a lot, but those are the broad strokes. These guys are primarily located in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and they're overwhelmingly Sunni. The Iraq group is simply not made up of the same people from Afghanistan and Pakistan. While some may have come to fight, the vast majority of those who call themselves al Qaeda in Iraq have no real ties to bin Laden. More importantly, though, AQI is a tiny percentage of the Iraq insurgency, and continuing the Iraq war *helps* al Qaeda by providing a never-ending recruitment video and the potential for live "training." So with apologies for the long explanation, it's far from "self-evident" that al Qaeda proper and al Qaeda in Iraq are the same thing or the same threat.

Hitchens goes on to prove his point by thrashing to death one straw man ("It is argued, first, that there was no such organization before the coalition intervention in Iraq.") which is an argument about the idiocy of going to war, and how it had nothing to do with real efforts against terrorism, not an argument about the presence of self-proclaimed al Qaeda in Iraq today. He then says it's wrong to claim that al Qaeda Iraq is different than al Qaeda proper, and that it's wrong to say that the "real" fight against al Qaeda is in Afghanistan rather than Iraq.

Of course, he's wrong, and those disdained assessments are generally correct. His argument ultimately begs the question: he claims it's wrong to say that the invasion of Iraq created the problem of al Qaeda, which works if (and only if) one assumes that AQI and AQ-proper are one and the same. The invasion of Iraq did indeed create al Qaeda in Iraq, and the idea of "we're fighting them there so they can't come here" has been debunked over and over -- it's really embarrassing that he'd use such a trope.

Additional proof of connections between the two groups is, apparently, that they're both nasty and vicious -- no, I can't explain what that has to do with the actual question at hand -- and the lack of support of AQI by many Sunnis in Anbar is also presented as evidence that AQI is our primary enemy and connected to al Qaeda as we generally think of it. Wha??

He saves the worst for last, though, claiming,

The third assumption, deriving from the first two, would be that if coalition forces withdrew, the AQM gangsters would lose their raison d'être and have nothing left to fight for. I think I shall just leave that assumption lying where it belongs: on the damp floor of whatever asylum it is where foolish and wishful opinions find their eventual home.

Well, he certainly beat the hell out of that straw man! If anybody *actually thought* that, it would be pretty silly. The real argument goes something like, "If coalition forces withdraw, AQI would lose recruiting power, funding, and attention, and immediately be wiped out by Iraqis who overwhelmingly hate them. Only through our presence does AQI remain popular and sympathetic enough to continue to exist."

But that line of reasoning is way harder to counter than a ridiculous made-up argument, so it goes unmentioned -- again, the classic Hitchens move of presenting a case in a way that only allows for his predetermined conclusion to prove correct. He continues to equate "being bad" with "being a real threat" and his writings suffer greatly as a result. It's one thing, though, to be wrong, and another to constantly dismiss legitimate views in favor of destroying imaginary ones. Really just embarrassing.

Oh, and while yesterday's review had the "I" pronoun nine times in 2000 words, this one raises the stakes: seven "I" in just 1000 words. Just in case, y'know, you forgot who it's all about. Read More......

And Another One Bites The Dust

Ohio Rep. Deborah Price, who barely survived last cycle, is calling it quits, according to Roll Call (subs. req).

Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) will announce Thursday that she will not seek a ninth term in her Columbus-based seat in 2008, according to two knowledgeable sources familiar with her intentions.

After not having a competitive race for several years, Pryce narrowly won in 2006 against Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy in a 1,055-vote victory in a difficult election cycle for the GOP that cost them a majority in both chambers. Pryce also bowed out of her leadership role as House Republican Conference chairwoman at the end of the 109th Congress when it became clear that she was vulnerable to a leadership challenge and would be unlikely to win in a race. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.) succeeded her in that post.

This very bad news for the GOP, as the district is trending Democratic, as is Ohio overall.

The 15th district has trended more and more in favor of Democrats in recent years and Pryce now represents a purely swing seat. Voters there split almost evenly between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the 2004 presidential election.

(snip)

Republican campaign strategists have said that they do not expect an onslaught of surprise retirements from within their ranks this cycle, though Pryce’s decision was not expected and caught leaders off guard.

I have no idea if this is the beginning of an onslaught of GOP retirements. But retirements like this one, in a district like this one, really hurt the GOP. Another few like this, and Nancy Pelosi should be able to play "We Are The Champions" next November. Read More......

Bush now wants Petraeus and Crocker to testify privately

George Bush doesn't want the American people to know what's going on in Iraq -- he just wants his sanitized spin in the news.

Yesterday, we learned that top Bush administration officials -- not General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker -- would be writing the September report on Iraq.

Today's revelation is that, despite the law mandating a public hearing by Petraeus and Crocker, the Bush administration now wants only a private congressional briefing:

White House officials suggested to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week that Petraeus and Crocker would brief lawmakers in a closed session before the release of the report, congressional aides said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would provide the only public testimony.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told the White House that Bush's presentation plan was unacceptable. An aide to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that "we are in talks with the administration and . . . Senator Levin wants an open hearing" with Petraeus.

Those positions only hardened yesterday with reports that the document would not be written by the Army general but instead would come from the White House, with input from Petraeus, Crocker and other administration officials.

No one should be surprised by this latest effort by the Bush administration to control the spin. For them, Iraq has been nothing but a public relations campaign. George Bush just cannot be honest with the American people. Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Add Mitch McConnell to the list of GOP Senators who are freaking out. He's their leader so it shows they really are cracking up. Get this. Mitch gave a speech this week where his big attack on Democrats was to call them "Old Europe." Wow, he's so tough. Apparently, McConnell's new political strategy is to parrot Don Rumsfeld. So be it. And, "Old Europe" was right about Iraq, which can't be said about Mitch McConnell and his GOP caucus.

All right. Let's get it started. Read More......

It's time for an AMERICAblog Paris meet-up

Okay, it's time for any and all of you in the Paris area to join me for a coffee or a drink this Sunday night, say 630pm-ish. Marcus, my American-in-Paris artist friend, and I were talking and we thought we'd do it at his art studio this coming Sunday the 19th. Depending how many of you show interest, we can figure out whether that location works or not. So, who is in the area and thinks they might be able to stop by?

In the meantime, here are a few photos of men playing Petanque, or Boule, or Bocce ball. They play it in the parks everywhere. (As always, click the photos to see larger versions.)





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