Wishful Drinking

Joe and I just went with his boyfriend Carlos and my friend Matt to see Carrie Fisher's one-woman show "Wishful Drinking" here in DC. It was great. I'd never seen her before, and honestly only know of her via Princess Leia and her appearances on Rosie's show (had no clue she was Debbie Reynolds' and Eddie Fisher's daughter, or that she was married to singer Paul Simon - revoke my card). She was really really great. Amazing comedian, and storyteller, and just really interesting. One of our readers, Daniel, works on her show (he's the stage manager, I think), got us tickets, and brought us back stage to meet her a few minutes ago after the show. What a hoot this woman is. She was telling us stories of Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy (stories that we can probably share in about 25 years) and she had me in tears. I asked Daniel if we can come back and do a quick Flip interview for you guys, on cam, and he asked her and she said yes. So, hopefully this week we'll get it. She's just very interesting, smart, funny, boisterous, and outspoken - the kind of woman every gay man would love. I think it might make a fun, interesting, and different interview to break up all the rest of the angry stuff I'm sure we'll be reporting as things heat up even further. Anyway, it's a great show, I'd really recommend it if it comes to town. Read the rest of this post...

A reader writes: We do routinely offer emergency contraception to the victim

This is absolutely why Sarah Palin didn't pay for rape victims' exams in her city while mayor.

Dear John
I am a physician who has been doing these kits for 25 years. Although the process has changed a bit over the years, we have never collected fertilized ovum as evidence. This would be a very invasive procedure and, anyway, these kits are done within 72 hours of the rape during which time fertilization would not necessarily have occurred.
We do routinely offer emergency contraception to the victim.
Hope this helps

Read the rest of this post...

Ford "$28 million for four weeks of work" CEO thrilled with bailout talk

Should we really reward such irresponsible behavior by Ford? Obviously Ford CEO Mulally wasn't worth the excessive pay since the company is now hitting the street begging for money. This is the problem with these bailouts, whether for Detroit or Wall Street. The executive teams have been showered with money beyond the dreams of most Americans and yet that wasn't enough. They are sitting on massive personal wealth made at the expense of others in the company - you know, the people who have been fired or had cutbacks to benefits - but in Mulally's America, none of that matters. He wants hard working Americans to fund projects that America has wanted for decades but Ford wanted their gas guzzling, polluting SUVs.

Normal Americans would be ashamed to pull such a stunt on the backs of taxpayer money but no, not Mulally. How 'bout he cuts his salary and benefits and lives like the rest and then come back for that free ride? Otherwise, go ask someone else for a loan and see how that discussion goes. Read the rest of this post...

Prada wearing Pope condemns love of money and power

First off, thanks to the Pope I had a 7AM Saturday wake up with helicopters flying overhead. Some idiot has recently decided that helicopters over the previously peaceful skies of Paris are always necessary, just to remind us that someone is doing something. (Hint: look for the person wearing platform shoes with a Napoleon complex and low poll ratings.) I don't even get the Pope's repeated attacks on money and power because, well, he has lots of money and power. Besides his affection for Prada and Gucci, just how frugal is life at the Vatican?

Anyone who has ever visited the Vatican is no doubt familiar with the luxuries inside and that's only the section that they allow outsiders to see. I hear it's much nicer inside and despite the big talk of abstinence for others, that may not be the case for the select few living there. Maybe there's been a big change lately and the Vatican is selling off its riches and they're all going to take a vow of poverty. I may have missed that press release so apologies if I got that wrong. Read the rest of this post...

Markos is right

Markos writes:

Sullivan links to a reader email that asks:

It also occurs to me that in a way McCain and Rove have actually simply taken over the liberal blogosphere in some way. They are being played.

Just a few examples---yesterday Obama gave a fantastic interview at the Service Forum. Did the liberal blogs even cover this? No.

He gave a great speech on the trail. Are his town halls even posted or excerpted? No [...]

The liberal bloggers have become McCain central.

Let me get this straight -- if we all sat around and talked about how great Obama's speech was, then things would be much better for him? Really? People believe this tripe? I'll give Sullivan a pass. He was a winger not too long ago, so he hasn't seen, first hand like many of us have, just how effective "ignoring the other side" has worked. Just ask Kerry and the Swift Boat Vets....

To all the concerned people emailing me about "being played", don't waste your time. I'm not about to revert to writing puff pieces about Obama thinking that his magic "new politics" bullshit will carry us to victory. He may or may not believe that crap, but I don't. We're going to win this thing the way campaigns are won -- by playing hardball. Politics is a blood sport. Republicans understand this and never flinch from flinging the shit. We won't win until we learn to fight back in kind. And I'm more than happy to get down in the mud with our friends on the Right so Obama doesn't have to.

Recent history vindicates the "tough and aggressive" path. We went toe to toe against Rove and his machine in 2006, and our math beat his. I have no doubt we're in for a two-peat this year, and it'll happen because we won't back off from exposing the GOP for the den of lies and corruption it has become.

I'm hearing from the same idiots as Markos.

Now, I'm not going to give the Obama campaign a pass simply because they can't go negative or they ruin their "new politics" brand. That's why we have 527s, why we have VoteVets, why we have Planned Parenthood and other groups. The Obama campaign leaned on funders and told them not to give any of those folks a dime, zero. They killed lots of advertising that was coming the way of the blogs, and never replaced it. You can't destroy the Democratic party's ability to fight back, and then play the "our campaign can't fight back because it would ruin our brand, but you can!" game.

I'm happy to help the Obama campaign fight back. God knows, we'd love to fight back, and will. But I get a little annoyed when people castrate our best fighters and then 6 weeks before the election suddenly realize their mistake. Read the rest of this post...

McCain gets 4 Pinocchios from Washington Post for lying about Palin

4 is hard to get.

John McCain is trying to claim that black is white when he argues that his running mate, Sarah Palin, has not accepted earmarks as Governor of Alaska. While it is true that she has sought fewer earmarks than her predecessor, Governor Frank Murkowski, Alaska still leads the nation in terms of per capita spending on earmarks, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. ...

Four Pinocchios for McCain for his clumsy attempt to rewrite history.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain lied, Palin never visited Iraq

From AP

Aides to Gov. Sarah Palin are scrambling to explain details of her only trip outside North America -- which, according to a new report, did not include Iraq, as the McCain-Palin campaign had initially claimed.

Palin made an official visit to see Alaskan troops in Kuwait in July of 2007. There, she made a stop at a border crossing with Iraq, but did not actually visit the country, according to a new report in the Boston Globe.

Earlier, McCain aides had said that Palin visited Iraq, and expressed indignation at questions about her slim foreign travel.

The campaign also said she had been to Ireland; that turned out to have been a refueling stop.

And Palin has suddenly added "Mexico" to her list of countries she's visited, even though she apparently didn't remember visiting Mexico for a good two weeks now. Anybody else thinking she took a shopping day trip to Tijuana? The larger issue, of course, is McCain giving up any sense of honor in order to win this election. He's now just another sleazy politician, willing to lie, cheat and steal his way into office. There's a larger story here, about McCain's fall from grace - I sure hope the media picks up on it. Read the rest of this post...

Religious right "Values Voters" summit sells racist waffle kit mocking Obama, blacks, Mexicans, Mrs. Obama

From AP:

While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama's politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the image of the classic pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.
Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.
On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero, above a recipe for "Open Border Fiesta Waffles" that says it can serve "4 or more illegal aliens." The recipe includes a tip: "While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language?"
The novelty item also takes shots at 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, Obama's wife, Michelle

First off, this is THE religious right summit. Just to show you how ungodly, how un-Christian, the religious really is. Second, just imagine the outcry if we'd sold "Cindy McCain drug testing kits" at our big conventions. McCain and Palin are speaking at this convention (as is Obama). Are they going to be speaking out against this blatant racism, sexism and Latino bashing, or does John McCain only care about prejudice when it's a lie that helps him win an election? Greg Mitchell has more, including a photo of the product. Read the rest of this post...

Can someone out there get me in touch with Eleanor Smeal?

It's clear the Obama campaign isn't going to touch the "rape kit" issue. It's time for the women's groups to do Obama's work for him. The women's community should be all over this issue. And I don't mean just issuing press releases. I mean launching excoriating Web sites, holding public press conferences and protests - finding all sorts of creative ways to make this issue news, and to hold McCain's and Palin's feet to the fire. So, I want to talk to Eleanor Smeal, one of the feistiest human beings I have ever met. I'm going to call her office on Monday, but if anyone knows her, knows how to get a hold of her, tell her that her son's favorite blogger, the guy who interviewed her at the CNN Grill during the Democratic Convention, wants to talk with her about blowing this issue up. Read the rest of this post...

Did Palin consider "rape kits" a form of abortion?

UPDATE: I'm now convinced this is what's going on. There's a nationwide issue going on where "Christian" hospitals or doctors are refusing to give these medications to women who were raped. John McCain's good buddy, Joe Lieberman, thinks that's okay. I will bet you that is what happened here. Sarah Palin didn't want to give rape victims the choice to stop being impregnated by their rapists.

(UPDATE: Joe Sudbay just sent me this article. In fact, there are those in the pro-life community who consider treating rape victims "abortion.")

A reader writes and asks an interesting question. Sarah Palin's town of Wasilla, Alaska, was the only - or at the very least, one of the very few - towns in Alaska to charge rape victims for their own rape kits. Now, rape kits are the medical equipment that the police use to examine rape victims for forensic evidence. During that exam, women are sometimes given drugs to stop the implantation of a possibly fertilized egg in the uterus. (As an aside, the reader asked if sometimes during these exams a fertilized egg is collected as evidence - does anybody have the facts on this?)

Now, Sarah Palin's policy on rape is the following - rapist gets your pregnant, too bad, you're going to carry your rapist's child for 9 months whether you like it or not. Palin wants to outlaw all abortion, unless the mother is going to die. You get raped? You don't get an abortion. And extreme conservatives like Sarah Palin consider stopping a fertilized egg from implanting "abortion." (And if a fertilized egg is collected, they certainly consider that abortion, and murder.) Is this why Sarah Palin was quite possibly the only mayor in Alaska to charge for "rape kits"? She considered treating rape victims a form of abortion?

It's been almost a week now that the Obama campaign has ignored this issue. We wrote about it last Monday, a good 5 days ago. Obama said yesterday that the reason he's not hitting back harder against McCain is because he doesn't want to "lie." It's not lying when you tell the truth about a hideous issue that affects every woman and man in America. This issue had all the hallmarks of a perfect response to throw John McCain off his game:

1. Palin was the only mayor in Alaska to charge rape victims.
2. McCain voted against Biden's own legislation to ban the charging of rape victims.
3. Palin and McCain have made outreach to women, and faux outrage over "sexism," a central part of their campaign.
4. McCain got into trouble years ago for telling a rape joke.
5. McCain hates talking about these issues.
6. The media has shown a marked interest in this story - it's a compelling story they want to tell, but they won't truly jump on it, full force, until the Obama campaign does something with it.
7. The "reason" Palin's chief of police gave for charging for the rape kits was that they didn't want to raise taxes (imagine linking tax cuts and rape, imagine John McCain having to deal with the rape question every time he talks about tax cuts).
8. And now we find out that Palin may have been against rape kits because she may have thought they were a form of abortion.

And the thing, it's all true.

At some point, someone needs to have a chat with whoever in the higher reaches of the Obama campaign is responsible for missing so many no-brainers - it's beginning to look like it's Obama himself - while at the same time complaining that the media insists on covering the "lipstick" story, and accusing anyone who is worried about the direction of this campaign of being a "bedwetter." Had Obama jumped on this story on Monday, when he first knew about it, we'd have still spent this week talking about sexism - but it would have been the sexism of John McCain and Sarah Palin. And before anyone says that the story is telling itself - no it's not. There have been a smattering of news stories about it. That's it. There should have been a media feeding frenzy over this story, but there wasn't because the Obama campaign refused to touch this story.

NOTE FROM JOHN: A reader writes:

I should add that the contraception offered in these instances would either be Plan B or something called the Yuzpe method which is 4 tablets of a high dose oral contraceptive. It would not be RU486 which does expel an implanted ovum. Plan B and the second method have several modes of action, including prevention of implantation of a fertilized ovum in the uterus, but these modes of action do NOT include aborting an already established ovum.

Read the rest of this post...

The Old McCain: Mayor Rudy and Governor Mitt weren't prepared to lead America

Sam Stein reports that McCain vehemently asserted that the Mayor of New York City (population 8.2 million -- 1000 times more than Wasilla) and Massachusetts (population 6.4 million -- 10 times more than Alaska) didn't have the national security cred to be President:

Back in October 2007, when McCain's candidacy still appeared dead and buried, the Senator berated the two Republican front runners for lacking the necessary political experience to handle commander in chief responsibilities.

"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism," the Senator declared. "I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time."

That was one of the last remnants of the old John McCain. The new John McCain, the compulsive liar, thinks Sarah Palin can step in and handle the job. John McCain will say anything and do anything to be president -- even sacrificing the security of the nation. He used to think that was important.



Rudy and Mitt didn't meet the McCain national security criteria: It is impossible to see Russia from either NYC or Boston. Read the rest of this post...

"McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak."

This is what John McCain has become. The St. Petersburg Times doesn't hold back. The title of today's editorial is "Campaign of lies disgraces McCain." That's right: McCain is lying. He's disgraceful:

This nation is facing real challenges on the economy, health care, jobs and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are significant differences between how Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain would address them. But McCain's recent campaign ads suggest the most vital issues are whether Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergarten children and whether he derided the Republican's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, by talking about lipstick on a pig.

McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak. It is leaving a permanent stain on his reputation for integrity, and it is a short-term strategy that eventually will backfire with the very types of independent-thinking voters that were so attracted to him.

McCain's campaign of lies is the completion of his transformation into George Bush. There was a time (I never believed it, but there was a time) when McCain was considered a "straight talker. He's abandoned all pretense of the old John McCain to become the next George Bush.

We've already had eight years of a president who thought so little of the American people that he lied to us repeatedly. McCain is has proven he can match Bush on lying and distorting the truth. Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

MSNBC is reporting that several hours after landfall, Ike is still a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 100 mph

Check out Bob Geiger's compilation of the week's editorial cartoons. You'll get some needed laughs. Those cartoonists say so much by combining just a few words and artistic ability.

Take a moment to read "And Yet the Books" by Lithuanian poet Czeslaw Milosz. Short and powerful, the last line is:

"Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

All of those books wouldn't be there on the shelf if a certain Wasilla Mayor had her way.

Then, back to reality... Read the rest of this post...

Palin lied about Iraq visit to "battle zone"

Good grief, she lies repeatedly about everything. Then again, considering how flimsy her resume is, this is no surprise. Hey, I looked at China from the border in Laos so does that count as a visit to China? I changed planes at the airport in Seoul, so maybe that also counts as a visit according to Palin. I took a bus through Zambia for thirty minutes after rafting down the Zambezi River. Does that bus trip count as "on the ground experience" in Zambia? Does flying over Greenland count? I could see it from the plane window, after all.

Following her selection last month as John McCain's running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a "military outpost" inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin's foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

But in response to queries about the details of her trip, campaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border when she visited Khabari Alawazem Crossing, also known as "K-Crossing," on July 25, 2007.

Asked to clarify where she traveled in Iraq, Palin's spokeswoman, Maria Comella, confirmed that "She visited a military outpost on the other side of the Kuwait-Iraq border."

It was the second such clarification in as many weeks of the itinerary of what Palin has called "the trip of a lifetime." Earlier, the campaign acknowledged that Palin made only a refueling stop in Ireland.

She took a few steps over the border to an outpost and thinks that was a battle zone? Does McCain honesty think this is valid experience for a v.p. candidate? Is he serious when he repeats the "she can see Russia" line? Even with that line, she has never even said that she personally saw Russia, only that it's possible. What new lie are we going to discover next? When is the media going to quit calling her lies "clarifications" or "stretching the truth" or providing other excuses. A lie is a lie and Palin-McCain can't stop themselves from lying. Read the rest of this post...

Ike slams Houston, 1.8 million without electricity

Update: New reports say over four million are without electricity.

For anyone who has been in Houston during a normal rain storm, you can imagine how tough it has to be today as Ike hits land. Latest from CNN:

Ferocious wind and floodwaters from Hurricane Ike severed power to 1.8 million customers in the Houston area early Saturday as the Category 2 storm made landfall on Galveston Island.

The storm's official landfall, with 110-mph winds, was at 2:10 a.m. CT, the National Hurricane Center said. But it began its assault on the Gulf Coast 18 hours earlier, pushing Gulf of Mexico floodwaters on to Galveston Island.

Winds aloft in the storm were even higher, and officials feared they could hit Houston high-rises extremely hard as it moves inland.

Richard Kotrla in La Marque, Texas, about eight miles from Galveston Bay, said early Saturday that Ike was "shaking this house pretty good."

My gazebo is a pretzel," Kotrla said.

Houston officials warned residents to stay put because it was no longer safe to try to escape.

Those who stayed were also largely in the dark.

Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy said 1.8 million of the power company's 2 million customers -- or 4 million people -- in metropolitan Houston are without electricity as high winds and heavy rains downed power lines.

"It's going to take several weeks to get all this power restored," he said. "We've been saying two to three weeks."

Read the rest of this post...

Bush/McCain economy: August foreclosure filings up 27%

No wonder McCain is hiding behind Sarah Palin and pushing irrelevant topics. Unfortunately McCain can't hide from his past, whether we're talking about the Keating Five scandal in the 1980's that brought down the Savings and Loan industry or his cozy relationship with Phil Gramm who brought us the credit crisis. McCain would rather lie about silly topics than talk about real and very serious problems. Not quite the maverick now, is he? Read the rest of this post...

Viral emails

From time to time, I'm going to share interesting viral emails I get about the election:

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach teach children about sexual predators, you are irresponsible and eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America 's.

* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that hates America and advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Read the rest of this post...