Friday, May 07, 2004

Sept 11 fund pays compensation to same-sex survivor


The federal government of the United States of America has now officially recognized gay partners under at least one federal law. That's a pretty historic event that I think will have ripples of influence in the future. I don't know that it will have any influence at all in the constitutional amendment debate, but these are the kind of events that gradually change a culture, and the bigots in the religious right know that, and fear it. If we were what the relgious right says we are, the feds wouldn't be paying us survivor benefits.

Can't wait for the fundies to make the public relations mistake of blowing a gasket over someone trying to help a survivor of September 11. Message to Pat Robertson: Go ahead, make my day.
The partner of a gay woman killed on Sept. 11, 2001, has been awarded money by the U.S. government's compensation fund, the first such award to a same-sex survivor who was not a legal heir, her attorney said on Thursday.

Compensation was paid this week to Nancy Walsh, a New Hampshire nurse whose partner Carol Flyzik was a passenger on a Los Angeles-bound jet that slammed into the World Trade Center, said Walsh's attorney Jennifer Levi. - Reuters
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BushCheneyFalwellRoberson pull out of youth conference to appease religious right


From my favorite fundie news service, AgapePress:
Under pressure from pro-family activists, the White House has retracted its endorsement of a controversial summer youth health conference. The event, called the Youth Health Conference: Generation On the Edge, is being sponsored by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, Planned Parenthood, and MTV. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also involved. Eric Whittington of the American Life League says the sponsor list should be enough to alert anyone of the danger of this event, which he predicts will be more of the same "safe sex" myth/pro-abortion promotion that U.S. tax dollars are already paying for right now. Whittington says in addition to fighting this conference, pro-family advocates must work hard to defund Planned Parenthood and other programs like it that promote immorality and abortion.
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US foreign policy screwed for the next year, possibly decades


Sure, the media has been talking about how the Iraqi prisoner fiasco has hurt our image in the Arab world, but I hadn't heard anyone telling us that things are as bad as the Washington Post reports today. This analysis is downright scary, and if true, heads VERY high need to roll in this administration:

The United States faces the prospect of a severe and enduring backlash not just in the Middle East but also among strategic allies, putting in question the Bush administration's ability to make serious headway on a range of foreign policy goals for the rest of this presidential term, according to U.S. officials and foreign policy experts.

The White House damage-control campaign, including the long-awaited apology from President Bush yesterday, is likely to have only limited, if any, success in the near term, administration officials said yesterday.

The White House is so gloomy about the repercussions that senior adviser Karl Rove suggested this week that the consequences of the graphic photographs documenting the U.S. abuse of Iraqi detainees are so enormous that it will take decades for the United States to recover, according to a Bush adviser....

If you want recruitment tools, these are the best anyone could imagine. They are a big blow and a stimulant to spur people to act against the United States. The real kicker for terrorism is indignity and humiliation, and that's what these pictures are about," said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

The haunting pictures will serve as "manna from heaven" for al Qaeda and other extremist groups, increasing the dangers to U.S. national security, said Hisham Melham, Washington correspondent for al-Arabiya, an Arab television network.
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'US soldiers abused young girl at Iraqi prison'


These kind of allegations need to be verified, but damn, the administration has handled this so poorly that it's made the climate ripe for these kind of stories to have legs even when they're so far unsubstantiated:
The US military has said it will investigate claims by a former inmate of Abu Ghraib prison that a girl as young as 12 was stripped and beaten by military personnel.... She was naked and screaming and calling out to him as they beat her. Her brother was helpless and could only hear her cries. This affected all of us because she was just a child. - ITV
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"Black Jesse Helms" runs for Congress


I just got a fundraising appeal by email for a self-professed "black conservative" from North Carolina who's running for Congress from the 5th district in that state. The man, Vernon Robinson, is proud that the local newspaper said of him: "Jesse Helms is Back! And this time, he's BLACK!" Reading his email and checking out his Web site he sure does sound like as much a bigot as Jesse Helms. According to his email he's opposed to:
- lesbian feminists
- the ACLU
- Hollywood whiners
- peaceniks
- atheists
- gun control
- radical homosexuals
- special rights for homosexuals
- "all of that 'immigrants are people too' rhetoric that tries to lay a guilt trip on any American who supports any limits at all on immigration to this country."
Then he tries to spin himself as an environmentalist, while at the same time taking yet another swipe at the Mexicans:
"Roaming mobs of these aliens trying to sneak into our country beat ugly paths through our national forests, trample rare desert vegetation, and desecrate important Native American archeological sites. They leave their trash behind, start forest fires through carelessness (60,000+ acres of Coronado National Forest burned this way), and all too often die in the desert on the way." [Now, he's Smokey-the-bigot.]
Then after several paragraphs blaming illegal aliens for 9/11, over crime, rape, destroying the environment, taking our welfare money, take our jobs, and apparently there's a secret Mexican plot to "to increase the flow of Mexicans into the United States so as to turn our culture and influence American policy toward Mexico." [Darn, those Mexicans are sneaky.]

After all of that, Robinson reassures us that "These are not racist observations." [Could have fooled me.]

Ok, the guy sounds like a bigot to me, but hey, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and go to his campaign Web site and see what he has to say about, oh, say, gay people:
After Senator Rick Santorum was attacked by the militant homosexual lobby, most of his fellow Republicans hid under their desks and said "no comment" when the reporters called. I am one of the few Republican elected officials who publicly defended Santorum. Santorum committed an unforgivable political sin in the eyes of the liberal media when he repeated the same thing that both the Bible and the Supreme Court say about homosexuality. [JOHN'S NOTE: Actually, Santorum compared gay relationships to bestiality.]

For Clinton and many other left-wing public figures, a family can be everything from her infamous "Village" or "Heather Has Two Mommies" or "Daddy's Roommate" to a transvestite, two lesbians, a pedophile, and a partridge in a pear tree. In my opinion, that does not a family make.

I will vigorously oppose homosexual marriages and adoptions, as well as "gay" Scoutmasters. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

I will join the dozens of Congressmen who sponsored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that provides that "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. I oppose the adoption of children by homosexuals.
Ok, I've had enough of this ass. The guy IS another Jesse Helms. How pitiful that this is the best the Republican party can do in reaching out to minorities. Finding a nutjob who can't stand other minorities. Lovely.

Hmmmm.... now that I've done a bit more research on this guy, I can see why he's putting out fundraising appeals. Seems he's in a bit of trouble.

- Seems members of his own Republican party have asked for a probe of his finances.
- And it seems that Mr. Robinson was caught engaging in a secret smear campaign against his opponent, and then lying about it.

Gosh, a Republican who lies, hates gays, has issues with Muslims and Mexicans, and has outrageously goofy ideas about how to "help" the environement. Maybe this guy is qualified to be a Republican politician in Washington. Read More......

VIDEO: Protesters heckle Rumsfeld



Click here to see the video.

In the middle of Rumsfeld's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, a group of protesters let rip a pretty damn good chorus of "Fire Rumsfeld!" for about a minute before the cops ushered them out. Click here to see some quick video of the protesters that I got off of CNN's broadcast. (It's a 1.6 meg mpg so give it time to download.) Read More......

Two of Kerry's top aides are gay (woo woo!)


"There are two gay men among those same 15 top Kerry campaign officials participating in the 7:30 a.m. call: Deputy Campaign Manager Steve Elmendorf, and Bob Farmer, a close Kerry friend and adviser." - Washington Blade
Hey, to be fair to Bush-Cheney, Cheney's openly-lesbian daughter Mary is running the vice president's re-election campaign, and getting paid $100,000/year to do it. Sure, she's an utter hypocrite and sell out, helping her father get re-elected so he can pass a constitutional amendment making her and her girlfriend of many years (her "life partner," she calls her, gold wedding bands and all) second-class citizens. But Mary's gay, and we're all so very very proud of her. Read More......

Xenophobic or just misogynistic?


Matt Drudge has a current post on his site that reads: "Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry Opens Up to Barbara Walters..."

So what exactly is Drudge's point in using her full name, that no one ever uses? That she's an immigrant with a foreign name and thus is, dare we say it, un-American? That she has several names, and thus is "not like you and me?" Or is it just the standard Republican tactic of attacking a guy's wife for political game (e.g., Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Wilson's wife (Victoria Plame), and now Mrs. Heinz Kerry). Read More......

You go girl, Mrs. Heinz Kerry!


In an interview with Telemundo, NBC's Spanish-language network, Teresa Heinz Kerry said, 'To have a couple of people, who escaped four, five, six times and deferred and deferred and deferred calling him anything regarding his service is in and of itself unpatriotic. Unpatriotic.' NBC's 'Nightly News' aired part of the interview Thursday.

Said [Bush-Cheney campaign chair Marc] Racicot: 'Every time the discussion focuses on John Kerry's Senate record of voting against weapons systems, voting against support for troops in the field or his positions on both sides of critical questions of national security, his campaign falsely claims that his patriotism is being attacked.' - AP
Two points:
1) Mrs. Heinz Kerry rocks.
2) You gotta love Racicot's totally hypocritical quote. And I paraphrase: "Every time we accuse John Kerry of hating the troops and not caring about whether the entire country is destroyed in a fiery terrorist attack, he claims his patriotism is being attacked!" Uh, yeah. Read More......

Un-Amerrrrrrrrrican


On last night's "The NewsHour" on PBS Rep. J.D. "Rita" Hayworth (R-AZ) [ok, that's not his middle name, he's just annoying me today], not known to be one of the brighter bulbs in Congress, criticized Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) yesterday for saying he thought the war in Iraq was unwinnable, and the administration doesn't know what it's doing there. Hayworth's response?
"I would caution those, even as I embrace the right to dissent, I would caution those who choose to blame America first..."
WTF? Who blamed America for anything? Murtha simply expressed an opinion that this battle doesn't seem winnable and perhaps we ought to consider other policy options. How in the name of God is that "blaming" America?

Of course, Murtha isn't blaming America, and Hayworth knows it. But the Republicans have made such good fodder over the past two years of accusing anyone who criticizes them of being un-American, and it's worked quite well, they figure 'why stop now?' Read More......

Comment of the Day


"If God really talked to Bush, don't you think He would have told him to shut the hell up by now?"

- Karen Zipdrive
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