Religious right Republicans... kind of dumb

Conservatives got us into this mess, so we already had a pretty good idea as to their level of intelligence. As for white evangelicals, gee, no one could have ever imagined that the bigots comprising the religious right are a bit out of touch with reality. And FOX News viewers, the lot of them. More from AP:

Two groups that normally support the Bush administration — white evangelical voters and conservatives — remained largely behind its war strategy.

Just over half of the white evangelicals who attend church at least weekly said the war was the right decision and the extra troops were helping, while about four in 10 said the war is a success — well more than Catholics and Protestants measured in the survey.

Slight majorities of conservatives saw success in Iraq, a troop increase that is working and a war that was the right choice, a third of them or more answered each question negatively.

Read the rest of this post...

The evolving story of Washington

Earlier this year there were numerous articles about George Washington's house in Philadelphia and the recent excavations linking the passage from the house to his slave quarters. The excavations launched a lively debate about Washington and his views on slavery as well as slavery in America. Washington supposedly soured on the idea of slavery in his final years and did in fact free them. Unfortunately he did not feel strong enough about the disgusting practice to take a stand while he was alive and waiting until after his death. He also did nothing about Martha Washington's slaves who remained after his death, which is not exactly the profile in courage that we like to think of with one of our founding fathers though it is the painful reality.

Much like the ongoing debate in Philadelphia, there is a fresh new examination under way at Mount Vernon as well. It may not be the glorified and sugary Washington that we heard about in grade school, but this debate is exactly what makes history interesting. History is always evolving and debating an important issue such as slavery and its lasting impact on America is healthy for all of us. Considering the pedestal that our current president was put on just a few years ago - and the trouble that presented for the country and the world - debates such as this can only help. Read on... Read the rest of this post...

Even worse than the "gay panic" defense

The murder of Michael Sandy in Brooklyn last year was heinous. A group of thugs arranged on the Internet to meet him for sex, then attacked Sandy, who fled into traffic on the Belt Parkway and was hit by a car. Four were involved, with the youngest assailant, who was only 17; he has since flipped on the rest of his friends.

Now one of the defendants, Michael Fortunato, is on trial for the murder and is claiming that he's gay, and that the rendezvous with Sandy was a ploy designed by Fortunato to out himself to his friends. This is sick BS. (NYT):

All along, homosexuality has defined the case. Prosecutors have used it as a sword, seeking heavier sentences for a hate crime.

As the trial began in Brooklyn Supreme Court yesterday, Mr. Fortunato’s lawyer, Gerald J. Di Chiara, sought to use sexual orientation as a shield. Without much explanation of how he planned to introduce this fact or turn it to his advantage, Mr. Di Chiara offered it to the jury in his opening argument. Not only was Mr. Fortunato gay, Mr. Di Chiara said, but so was the main prosecution witness, Gary Timmins, 17, who has pleaded guilty to attempted robbery in exchange for his testimony.

In fact, Mr. Di Chiara continued, Mr. Fortunato had planned to tell his friends of his sexual orientation on the night in question. Luring a gay man out to a secluded lot in Sheepshead Bay was part of that plan, Mr. Di Chiara said.

...Mr. Fortunato, he said, might have planned to smoke marijuana with Mr. Sandy as a means of testing his friends’ sentiments about homosexuality. Or, he said, perhaps Mr. Fortunato had wanted to swindle a gay man, to see how his friends reacted to a gay person. Or, he said, perhaps Mr. Fortunato had simply wanted to rob somebody.

According to the New York Daily News, investigators recovered a cache of homoerotic images and messages from Fortunato's computer.

If anyone had any doubt that the closet can kill, here we see the answer that blows doubt away. This young man thought that he could prove his machismo to his friends by fag-bashing and robbery. Nothing could be worse than being gay.

The prosecutor, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, said the plot was hatched by Fortunato, who told his friends, "You could always get a gay guy to meet you," and trolled a chat room called "Brooklyn Man 4 Man" for a victim. Fortunato boasted he had ripped off a gay man he had lured to a motel in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, she said.

Only when faced with additional jail time because of the status Sandy’s murder as a hate crime was Fortunato ready to come out of the closet. I seriously doubt that he would have told his friends that he was gay if they had been successful in simply robbing or beating up Sandy that night. The self-loathing obviously ran deep. In the end, this defense cannot possibly succeed in deflecting the fact that it’s a hate crime. As a reader aptly pointed out, the basis for the assignment of a charge of a hate crime is the intent of the accused, not the identity/orientation of the accused. Read the rest of this post...

Bush-Cheney invite far-right "hate" Freepers to White House

You'll recall that the Freepers are a far-right, and I mean VERY far right, Web organization that even FOX's Bill O'Reilly criticized as being too extreme. For Bush-Cheney to invite them to White House and then greet them personally... that's pretty sick. It's also likely a sign of the desperation that's sunk in at the White House. When you're at 28% in the polls and most of the sane elements of even your own party are starting to hate you, you have to turn to the insane for support. Read the rest of this post...

Bush vows to veto bill that would provide health insurance to millions of kids

Bush is threatening to effectively kill the current program by vetoing this bill, knowing full well that the money is going to run out. He doesn't care. He also doesn't care if the Republicans never win another election. Bush's ego is more important. He's already shown us that he has no problem killing 4,000 American troops for his ego, and now he's taking on poor children.

Worst. President. Ever. Read the rest of this post...

Lieberman and Lindsey DADT Graham to offer amendment authorizing war with Iran

That's exactly what this amendment does. It reads like every other war authorization resolution the Senate has passed previously. Which brings up an interesting question. If gays can't serve in the military, can they still offer resolutions forcing others to fight wars for them? Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good Morning.

L'Shana Tova to all who are observing the high holy days.

If you need a respite from the week, check out the poem of the week. It's "A Green Crab's Shell" by Mark Doty. It's about more than green crabs.

Start threading. Read the rest of this post...

Massive protests in Mandalay and Yangon, Myanmar

Now entering the fifth day of protest by Buddhist monks against the brutal military dictatorship, 10,000 monks hit the streets in Mandalay and another 1,000 in Yangon. Read the rest of this post...

Now Bernanke wants to regulate the market

The sub-prime loans are only part of the problem with the economy. The shortfall and run on the bank at Northern Rock in the UK was due to the recent fad in the financial world - mastered in the US by the largest banks, that we suddenly had to have in recent years - where the banks hold little and extend themselves significantly by borrowing from other banks and then selling off their loans in bits and pieces. It's the same old story that when things are going up, hooray, people make money. This becomes a problem when the market softens and then suddenly the banks are overextended (holding cash to support a loan is soooo yesterday) and nobody is interested in buying the once high-flying bits and pieces. Suddenly a once large (perhaps inflated is better) bank is scrambling to find money and everyone else is already scrambling to keep themselves afloat so that cash is no longer available.

Bernanke is finally talking about regulation but whether it is too late is another question. Mr. Bubble had been completely asleep at the wheel and even talked about the problem being exclusively the sub-prime loans. Of course, they are part of the problem but banks overextending themselves may turn out to be a much bigger problem for the economy. As the higher rates kick in for adjustable loans and defaults increase, finding cash will be even more difficult because who wants to buy such risky securities now that the floor is collapsing? Northern Rock - a bank which is now worth a few billion less and had to be propped up by the Bank of England - could very well be setting the example for what is in store for US banks.

The global rejection of the dollar is another sign of the problems that are ahead. The movement towards the euro and other currencies is signaling a lack of faith in the US economy which is burdened with the high cost of Iraq plus the problems with the diving real estate market and the soft economic forecast. The sub-prime problems are clearly a problem, but only the most immediately obvious problem. Mr Bubble will surely be called into question again and again as the US banking industry stumbles as the market for selling off loans dries up. As the US learned in 1929, over-extending with small cash reserves to cover loans that are 10-20+ times the value eventually result in a messy situation. Just remember who failed to regulate and provide over site as this fantastic new system was rolled out. Read the rest of this post...

90 million Americans without health insurance in 2006-7

Having used the health care system both in France (WHO ranked #1 in the world) and the US (WHO #37) I know I would never want to go back to the high cost and miserable process in the US. The system in France is not perfect but for the bulk of the population it is easy to use and costs are less than in the US, for medical visits, out of pocket expenses and cost to working families. We have a combination of both national insurance as well as private insurance and between the two most costs are covered. National insurance in France does not mean everything is automatically covered, though costs are much more contained. In France I have more choices for medical care than I did with a lousy HMO in the US and again, my costs both in terms of out of pocket deductibles as well as taxes/monthly payments are considerably less.

So will the French system work in the US? Maybe, maybe not. Each country has different dynamics so there is no "one size fits all" solution. Could the US learn something from the WHO #1 health care system? Learning from success and failure in other countries seems like such a sensible idea and in my mind much could be learned though all too often in the US, we ignore what other countries have done whether it's health care, fighting terrorism, etc. but it would be a valuable lesson to study plans that work and that fail and examine how those successful ideas could be Americanized. As a country, America deserves better. Read the rest of this post...