Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Monday that questions over whether he identifies himself as a Baptist or an Episcopalian are not as important as his overarching faith. "The most important thing is that I am a Christian," the Arizona senator told reporters following two campaign stops in this early voting state.
With all due respect, you're not that good a Christian if you can't even recall what faith you are and then feel the need to lie about it.
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Since Mitt, McCain, Rudy and Fred decided they couldn't risk dropping a pantload by participating in the WingNutDaily Values Voter debate (currently livestreaming as of 9PM), it's not nearly as entertaining as it could be. Late rider to the clown car, Alan Keyes, is on hand, proving Fred Thompson's late entry into the race should have been no logistical deterrent to an appearance here in front of the Base.
I tuned into the debate during a primo question from conservative icon Paul Weyrich. Here's just a taste of the fundie insanity going on in Fort Lauderdale tonight:
What do you intend to do to counteract the homosexual agenda?
Alan Keyes: says that he doesn't want the homo agenda to destroy marriage and the natural family. The family ordained by God for procreation must be respected under the law.
Duncan Hunter: We need to support the traditional family...we must fortify the military. [I guess that lame transition from marriage to DADT.]
Ron Paul: It's important have the right to their life if they do no harm. You can't force morals through legislation. A group can't force themselves on any one either, he then goes on to oppose hate crimes legislation of any kind. Boy he dodged the marriage matter all the way.
Sam Brownback: He agrees with Duncan Hunter. He defends Peter Pace's defense of DADT, and making a decision considering his faith. He's proud of standing up for him. DADT is a good policy. He wants to fight against hate crimes law (hmmm. Is he ready to roll the existing hate crimes law, which protects religion?).
John Cox: We don't have to sanction behavior, we don't need more litigation. "We have this problem with transvestites who want to become school teachers." We need to use common sense and talk about the fact that we are looking at opening the floodgates to polygamy and bestiality.
Tom Tancredo: You cannot make a rule as president to change the morality of the country. The problem, he says is the influence of the homosexual agenda in the school curriculum. His solution -- a voucher system to get the kids out of the schools.
Mike Huckabee: He believes the homosexual agenda has become strong because the traditional family has become weak. He's worried about what kind of role models mothers and fathers are presenting to the next generation. He doesn't want to foment hatred toward other groups, however, but wants to strengthen the family.
Oh, it's pathetic. In the "speed round" (they vote by pressing a Y/N light) Janet Folger is going on about defunding Planned Parenthood (something they all agree on, apparently), and now Phyllis Schlafly is asking will oppose amnesty for undocumented immigrants. They are getting really uncomfortable.
Sam Brownback is trying to elaborate the difference between a guest worker program (which he supports, with modifications) and "amnesty." John Cox jumps in to say a guest worker program won't work either.
I don't think I can listen to any more of this fundie drivel...
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Hate when that happens. Though honestly I'd prefer that more people watched Bush. At 28% or so in the polls, we couldn't create a better mascot for the Republicans heading into an election year. The data is from Media Bistro:
Network Time Program Viewers FNC 9:00 Bush Address 745,000 FNC 9:19 Dem. Response 813,000 FNC 9:24 Analysis 512,000
Network Time Program Viewers MSNBC 9:00 Spec.Prog. 470,000 MSNBC 9:01 Bush Address 455,000 MSNBC 9:20 Dem. Response 446,000
Network Time Program Viewers CNN 9:00 Bush Address 454,000 CNN 9:20 Dem. Response 507,000 CNN 9:24 Larry King 400,000
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This weekend I was in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Day of Equality, where I gave a talk about "Educating Potential Political Allies and "Urban vs. Suburban vs. Rural and Perceptions of Rights and Community." Birmingham, btw, is my wife Kate's hometown.
It was eye-opening to meet with so many people committed to LGBT equality in a very Red State; while we live in North Carolina it's a Blue bubble here in the Triangle. It's not exactly San Francisco or NYC, but it's many steps ahead of Alabama, in terms of a more sane balance between the secular and religious sets.
The rights many gay folks who live in major metro enclaves take for granted are being battled for time and again in Alabama. Listening to the stories at this conference was both depressing (combating the level of Jesus-land freaks and blatant disregard of church-state separation by officials and legislators) and uplifting. It it all in perspective -- we need to know how far many of our brothers and sisters in the movement have to go -- and how they are willing to fight on in the deep South.
It was ironic that the Equality conference venue -- the Birmingham Civic Center -- was sharing space with this truly priceless event:
I didn't see the faith healing fraud, but I thought the irony was delicious.
During my sessions, LGBT Alabamians and allies from all walks of life shared their frustrations and experiences, but also expressed why they love and want to reclaim their state from the misguided moralizing elected officials (in both parties).
How can you not cringe when you hear from a lesbian pharmacy technician who worked for CVS (a gay-friendly company) in a northern state, and was fired after a transfer when her supervisor in Alabama found out she was gay.
And what about the story a university worker, where there is actually a diversity council, but whose leadership only thinks about racial diversity. Gay equality wasn't on his map because, as the session participant said, the man thinks being gay is a choice. The absurdity of it boggles the mind. You can watch video of my response to that story:
It's no wonder that Alabama residents, even educators with tenure, worry about being ostracized. Not just socially, but literally -- another participant told of being shuttled off to a dark corner of an office away from colleagues once it was discovered that she was gay.
If you're transgendered, life in Birmingham is light years better than say, Meridian, Mississippi, where conference speaker Roxanne Demornay hails from. She gave a talk about her journey from a gay man in Mississippi to transitioning to a woman in the reddest of states. Roxanne was featured in the film Small Town Gay Bar as well as an entertaining episode of U.S. of ANT, a show on LOGO that profiled gay life in Alabama. Birmingham, even as hard as life can be for many LGBT citizens, was an island of tolerance compared to Meridien.
Howard Bayless, an out gay man (also on the board of Equality Alabama), is running for the school board in Birmingham proper, where the schools are in crisis -- 80% of kids live below the poverty line, and 90% of them are black. Flight to Greater Birmingham (a series of separate small municipalities in close proximity to downtown with their own school systems and police forces) by both whites (and blacks of financial means) have left the infrastructure in the hands of the usual cast of characters of kingpins and party hacks who have little interest or anything to show for their years of rule over the city center. Sad indeed, and certainly not unique to this city.
Right: Bob Palmatier, Howard Bayless and Jennifer Clarke of Equality Alabama's board.
The most important message is that it's gratifying to see so many LGBT folks and allies at the dinner, as well as progressives moving downtown and actively engaged in the political and economic future of the city of Birmingham. Blue state gays cannot and should not write off the South. When you have people like Howard Bayless, Rep. Patricia Todd (the first out lesbian elected official in Alabama, named a trailblazer in the 40th anniversary edition of The Advocate) and long time members of the gay community working hard in a city like Birmingham -- committed to change and the grassroots level, change that benefit everyone, not just gays in the deep South -- they need our support. Kathy of Birmingham Blues hits the nail on the head:
It is disheartening to see commentary suggesting that more progressive states secede from the South, as if the South were a hopeless monolith of ignorant, barefoot, cousin-marrying rednecks. Hint: it’s not. The Democratic establishment wasn’t too excited about Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy when he first introduced it, but the party is reaping the benefits now. A similar push by national LGBT organizations would likely have similar positive results — if the leadership could take off its collective blinders.
After all, the problem isn't just about fighting fundamentalists, it's about battling inertia and ignorance among allies -- as well as the same within our community -- about the state of affairs in the struggle for equal rights. Take a look at this clip for an example.
Many thanks to Rep. Patricia Todd and Jennifer Clarke, Kathy and Bill McMullen, and the efforts of John Smallwood (and the Equality Alabama team). They provided hospitality, great humor and they represent their state so well. You made us feel like family.
Some other pictures from the weekend:
L: Kate with State Rep. Patricia Todd at the gala Saturday evening. R: John Smallwood of Equality Alabama with Kathy of Birmingham Blues from Friday's meet and greet.
At the silent auction on Saturday, Kate and I outbid Patricia Todd for this hilarious sign. I told Patricia that she could come take a look at where we hang it at our place when she comes to Durham to speak at Equality NC's gala in November.
And one last note to readers -- John's now back in the swing of things, so my guest blogmistress stint at AMERICAblog has now come to a close. I'll be dropping a post in every now and then, but I just wanted to thank all the readers for the warm welcome and kind comments while the posting was fast and furious.
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In all fairness to Mitt Romney, he was only 55 years old in 2002 when he was a flaming pro-gay politician hell-bent on sucking up to gay activists on pretty much every issue, and thus was distributing these fliers all over Boston. But hey, that was five years ago and Mitt was a younger man. We really shouldn't hold people's youthful indiscretions against them.
Putting aside the awful PR implications in the Middle East of Greenspan being tied to the Iraq War, I'm not sure I really want my banker's advice for whether or not we invade a foreign country. Okay, Greenspan would have useful advice about the banking/economic implications. But in fact, as for the effect on oil, prices have skyrocketed, so I'm not feeling very secure, are you?
Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace commented on Iraq on Friday, and many of his perspectives were maddening.
In particular, he made one statement that is just outrageously misleading. He said,
One of the mistakes I made in my assumptions going in was that [...] the Iraqi Army, given the opportunity, would stand together for the Iraqi people and be available to them to help serve the new nation, [but] they disintegrated in the face of the coalition's first several weeks of combat, so they weren't here.
CNN further reports, "Had he known that would happen, he would have recommended more troops be sent at the outset of the Iraq war, he said."
These comments on the Iraqi army are unbelievably misleading. Just a few weeks ago there was a huge blowup over this issue when Paul Bremer tried to blame his decision to disband the Iraq army on his minders in the administration, and President Bush claimed not to remember having given any such order. Bremer responded by making public a letter that seemed to indicate he had cleared the decision with the administration, and round and round it went. The point being, it's firmly established that the Iraqi army didn't just "disintegrate," but rather was disbanded by the US. The attempt to blame Iraqi soldiers for somehow abandoning their country is mendacious and absurd.
It is true, however, that the US faced far less opposition than anticipated from regular Iraqi units. Irregular (guerrilla-type) Fedayeen forces were much more prevalent, and much of the Iraqi army did "melt away" from the American onslaught. It's not like the soldiers disappeared into thin air (they easily could have been reconstituted, absent the profoundly misguided decision to put tens of thousands of trained, armed Iraqis on the unemployment line) but they didn't put up the fight we anticipated at the beginning of the war.
So . . . does anyone really believe that if Pace knew the Iraqi army was going to fight much less than we thought he would have sent more American troops to Iraq? Considering nobody was planning for the post-invasion period, and there was overwhelming pressure to *minimize* the size of the invasion force, it's simply unbelievable that Pace honestly thinks he would have recommended sending more troops to Iraq in anticipation of less initial fighting. Just more revisionism from officials leaving the administration, in an attempt to pass blame to Anybody Else.
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Hey, it's a lot easier to make campaign contributions when you have extra disposable income from not paying taxes. But shouldn't it be a big concern for a campaign -- and the media -- when a top "bundler" for Rudy Giuliani wasn't paying taxes. Blue Jersey has the details and asks the right questions.
First the details:
For example, take the subject of this post: Ocean County Republican Chairman and Rudy Giuliani '08 bundler, George Gilmore. Maybe you're familiar with Gilmore, who is without question the most powerful Republican boss in the state. He's a partner in a lucrative law firm, Gilmore & Monahan, which handles millions of taxpayer dollars every year. He's a fund-raising dynamo, becoming a "Pioneer" (bundling more than $100,000) for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. But there's one thing a lot of people didn't know about Gilmore until recently.
He's had trouble paying his taxes.
At least that's what the Ocean County Observer says. Last week, they reported that "county tax records still show that Gilmore has a tax lien for $158,716.74 in outstanding [individual federal income] tax payments from 2005." According to the Observer, Gilmore paid his liens just a few weeks ago -- the exact same time citizens and reporters began researching the story.
What Giuliani should do is a no-brainer: if Gilmore had the means to raise $100,000 for Bush in 2004, he had the means to pay his income taxes in 2005. To absolve him because he paid them off when people started asking questions is absurd. Giuliani needs to boot him from his campaign, and do it fast.
Now the question should be, 'How much money did Gilmore bundle for Giuliani while he left more than $158,000 of his taxes unpaid?' In other words, how much is Giuliani going to return, or give to charity? Hillary returned upwards of $800,000 in the Hsu case.
We're waiting for the answers.
If scrutiny of bundlers is good for the Democrats, it's good for Rudy. Didn't he
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The song is from Bright Eyes, and is called "First Day Of My Life." It's on the soundtrack of the movie of a friend of Joe and mine (what is the correct grammar for that?) called "The Bubble." Good flick, Israeli, a very personal and sympathetic look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anyway, just found the video, it's really nice, and a good way to start the week - the last few seconds are priceless.
Yes, God forbid we pass legislation that would require the military to follow their own rules about giving our troops a break in order to ensure that they're at peak fighting efficiency (and peak defensive efficiency to stop themselves from getting killed). Republicans talk a lot about honoring the troops, yet they're always the ones screwing the troops.
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This guy flip-flops around even more than Mitt Romney though he is helping everyone see why there was so much economic turmoil during his tenure. Besides "clarifying" his statement about Iraq being about the oil (Saddam had to go to protect oil distribution or else prices would spiral out of control...sort of like what we have today and worse, is his latest position) he also is now blasting the Democrats including obvious attacks against Hillary who was one of the few in the Senate who called him on his senseless support of tax cuts.
Mr Bubble looks more desperate every day and while he may think he's rescuing his legacy, he's only helping to show everyone just why he was a terrible Fed chief and the owner of some of the most turbulent economies in recent history. He is as clueless today as he was when he somehow missed the previous bubbles, thought that slashing taxes during war made sense and ignored the sub-prime economics. Now he's crying about everyone else being terrible and he may just sit out voting in the next election. What a loss that will be for everyone. If only he would just stop grabbing a microphone or chasing news reporters.
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It was so much different back when it was the Taliban destroying the Buddhas of Bayan in Afghanistan. The world was outraged and Colin Powell even referred to it as a "crime against humankind. Now that centuries of history are being looted and damaged across Iraq, we hear so little. We can add this to the list of history sites that the US has destroyed such as My Son and Hue in Vietnam. Who needs history anyway?
"There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the Nassariyah area alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they have all been systematically looted. Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he would always build another. But now the robbers are destroying everything because they are going down to bedrock. What's new is that the looters are becoming more and more organised with, apparently, lots of money.
"Quite apart from this, military operations are damaging these sites forever. There's been a US base in Ur for five years and the walls are cracking because of the weight of military vehicles. It's like putting an archaeological site under a continuous earthquake."
Of all the ancient cities of present-day Iraq, Ur is regarded as the most important in the history of man-kind. Mentioned in the Old Testament – and believed by many to be the home of the Prophet Abraham – it also features in the works of Arab historians and geographers where its name is Qamirnah, The City of the Moon.
If you're transgendered, life in Birmingham is light years better than say, Meridian, Mississippi, where conference speaker Roxanne Demornay hails from. She gave a talk about her journey from a gay man in Mississippi to transitioning to a woman in the reddest of states. Roxanne was featured in the film 
Right: Bob Palmatier, Howard Bayless and Jennifer Clarke of 
