Evening open thread

Chat away. I've decided to let weekends go a little slower around here, to get a life, the usual :-) Of to a tree trimming party! Read the rest of this post...

How the radical right killed Matthew Shepard

It's funny how the radical right constantly finds ways to outdo themselves. Just when you think they've done all they can to portray Christians as hateful petty pseudo-religious bigots, they surprise you even more hate. To wit: Their renewed attacks on Matthew Shepard.

Isn't it funny how the only people to still be pissed as hell at Matthew Shepard are the radical right hate groups. It's now clearer than ever that they're terribly worried about the lingering perception that their hate speech about gays helped contribute to an atmosphere of bigotry that led to Shepard's death. The radical right is claiming in the past week that ABC somehow "proved" that Matthew Shepard's death wasn't a hate crime. The "new" evidence? One of Shepard's murderers now says they were just jealous that he appeared to have money, so they lured him to a remote location, pistol-whipped him some 48 times to the head, or so, tied him to a fence in the freezing weather to die, and then made up an elaborate story about how Shepard had tried to come on to them and that they killed him because he was gay. Pretty elaborate cover-up, especially when the cover-up makes the killers sound worse than the motive they now claim they were trying to conceal.

I mean, think about it. We're to believe that they kill Shepard simply because they don't like that he appears to have money. But instead of admitting that it was a simple murder (so to speak), they confess that they brutally executed him because he's gay, causing a national outcry of anger and demands for them to be put to death. Yeah, pretty effective plan that one.

Of course, their "new" story is utter bs. Not to mention, the only "proof" of it is the new claims of the murderer himself - which means he perjured himself in court when he claimed that they killed Shepard because he was gay. So we're to believe an admitted perjurer's new story?

Anyway, you get the picture. But don't let that stop the religious right from one last kick at Shepard in his grave. They've now made an all-out effort to publicize the "fact" that ABC has "proven" that Shepard was no killed because he was gay. Why? Because they know that they're the ones who killed him. Here's how.

What the religious right, and many conservatives, never understand is the not-terribly-nuanced difference between what is legal and what is right (meaning, "good"). Hate speech is legal in America, but that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it good. And hate speech (be it spoken or in writing) is, I would argue, probably the number one cause of bigotry and prejudice in America.

Think about it. No one is born a bigot (and no one is born a fundamentalist bigot). It's a learned trait. It's a trait you learn from the speech and writings (and actions too) of your parents and peers in society. You aren't born hating blacks or Jews or gays or whomever, you LEARN to hate them, most often through the words you hear in your own home, from your own friends, and/or from the writing of others.

You learn to hate from the hatred of others. So it's really not any stretch at all to suggest that the hatred of gays by the religious right (and their previous hatred of blacks, and current subjugation of women) inspires, feeds, and helps maintain a climate of prejudice that it is absolutely responsible for discrimination and violence against those groups.

Again, this isn't rocket science. The white Klansman who strings up a black man. Where did he get his desire to do this? From birth? From meeting black people and "realizing" that they're "evil" and "need to be killed"? Or from the bigoted messages he was fed as a young child and throughout his life?

The same applies to the religious right treatment of gays. You can't label someone a pedophile, suggest that he's responsible for causing September 11, and claim that his mere existence is going to cause the end of our nation and our world, and not expect that to inspire hatred of that person. I mean, Jesus, you'd have to be a freak not to hate someone who was out to rape your kid and literally cause the end of the world. And that kind of hatred IS the root cause of anti-gay violence. Per se someone that kills you or attacks you because they hate fags is motivated by anti-gay hate. And that hate comes from the anti-gay zeitgeist in the society around them.

And the religious right is prime mover and shaker in creating an fomenting and maintaining that anti-gay zeitgeist, and that's why the religious right shares the blame for killing Matthew Shepard.

And it really really really pisses them off to hear us say that. So say it loudly and often. YOU killed Matthew Shepard. Read the rest of this post...

Ukraine Update: Attempted Murder of Opposition Leader

Seems like there remain the Ukraine some old school Russian style operatives.



From AP:

Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko checked out of a Vienna clinic Sunday where he was diagnosed with dioxin poisoning, saying he was glad to alive, as Ukrainian prosecutors reopened a criminal investigation into allegations someone tried to kill him with the toxic chemical.

A spokesman for the prosecutor general's office said the investigation - which had been closed last month for lack of evidence - was reopened after doctors in Vienna confirmed that the opposition leader had been poisoned by dioxin, possibly slipped into his food.
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Yushchenko has accused Ukrainian authorities of poisoning him, but told reporters he does not want to talk further about the allegation until after the runoff vote has been rerun on Dec. 26.

"I don't want this factor to influence the election in some way - either as a plus or a minus," he said in Russian. "This question will require a great deal of time and serious investigation. Let us do it after the election - today is not the moment."

Yushchenko thanked the medical staff who determined he had been poisoned, which caused him extreme internal pain and left his once-handsome face pocked and gray.

Doctors said had the dose of dioxin been greater, it could have been fatal but that he is now getting better and is capable of returning to the campaign trail.
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Yushchenko fell ill Sept. 5 and has been treated at the Vienna clinic twice before, but it was tests performed since he checked in Friday night that provided conclusive evidence of the poisoning, said hospital director Dr. Michael Zimpfer.

A lab in Amsterdam, using a newly developed test, found his blood contained more than 1,000 times the normal amount of dioxin, Zimpfer said.

Tests showed the toxin was taken orally, and was likely slipped into something that Yushchenko ate or drank, Zimpfer said, suggesting that whoever was responsible may have thought it untraceable.

"Until recently, there has been no (blood) testing available," Zimpfer said. "This may be one of the reasons that this kind of poisoning, if it was a criminal act, was chosen."
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The massive quantities of it found in Yushchenko's system caused chloracne, a type of adult acne caused by exposure to toxic chemicals. The condition is treatable, but can take two to three years to heal.
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Among other things, Dioxin is known to cause cancer and Dr. Nikolai Korpan, the physician who has been treating Yushchenko, said it is too early to tell what other problems might develop.

For now, he said, "we can confirm that his health is very good at this moment and he can do his job," Korpan said.

While we may complain about our politics here at home, it's good to note that our politics of lies and deception is a lot kinder and gentler than attempted murder of opposition leaders. Character assaination is, I guess, not quite the same kind of crime. Read the rest of this post...

And another thing about Kerik

I'm watching THIS WEEK this morning. And ABC's Terry Moran, ever the pit bull (not), just reported that the reason the White House didn't know about Kerik's alleged affair with a subordinate, taking thousands of dollars of gifts from his previous job he wasn't supposed to take, etc., is becaus KERIK DIDN'T TELL THE WHITE HOUSE.

Huh. Bush is appointed the top domestic counter-terrorism guy in the US and he doesn't even vet the guy to see if he is, well, a terrorist, or at least a bad cop. But hey, Keriks NEVER TOLD Bush the truth, and as we know, in this White House if you don't TELL the president something, then the president has no obligation to want to, or try to, find out the truth.

The funny thing is that how did so many outside non-profits like CREW, and newspapers across the country, and bloggers/online reporters like John Byrne at RawStory get the inside scoop on Kerik all within a week? Yet the White House didn't have a clue, and had no way of getting a clue about Kerik? They didn't even do an FBI background check on the guy? They couldn't wait a week to do the same investigation everyone else did on the guy? Isn't homeland security worth that kind of due diligence from the White House?

So where was the president while all this was happening? Read the rest of this post...

In a shocking, unprecedented move the White House trashes Kerik

Boy, this is so unusual for this administration that never has a bad thing to say about anyone. Kerick goes from the penthouse to the outhouse within 24 hours. Maybe the criticism is warranted but after four years of trashing like this, I wonder if anybody still listens.
Read the rest of this post...

Why didn't they do this 2 years ago?

Well, now we know that Bush could have sped up production of the armor a long time ago, but waited until he was publicly embarrassed to do it. How many our service members died because Bush refused to address this problem a good year ago when it first was raised? And I'll also blame the media. Where was their outcry on this issue before? Sure, they wrote about it like once. Then ignored it, even when Kerry brought it up. The blood is on their hands as well. How many issues like this is the media aware of, yet not saying boo about it?

U.S. military commanders in Iraq, where bombings pose the deadliest threat to their soldiers, have welcomed news the Pentagon wants to speed up production of upgraded armored Humvees, a military spokesmen said Saturday.

Read the rest of this post...