Open thread

Just getting my EyeTV 250 set up. Interesting software, and will be immensely useful for starting to post more news video in the future. Had I had it set up this morning, we'd have been able to see Bush lie, demur on whether gays are immoral, and, this I forgot to mention, Bush used the correct term "orientation" when referring to gays (the fundies hate it when people use that term). (Mike Signorile mentioned this to me this evening, and he's right - it's interesting.) Bush obviously meant "sexual orientation," Mike notes, but didn't want to say "sexual" - still, very interesting that Bush even know the term du jour, rather than the old "preference." Maybe Mary Cheney is giving some behind the scenes gay coaching around the White House. Read the rest of this post...

After Daily Show appearance, "ex-gay" shrink excommunicated from religious right

Richard Cohen was one of the, if not THE, leading religious right doctor espousing the pseudo-science that you can "cure" gays (the religious right has several factions of "ex-gay" promoters - one faction says you can pray away the gay, a second faction believes that you cure homosexuality by punching a pillow and screaming "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" repeatedly (seriously)). Cohen was the head of the "mommy, mommy, mommy!" school of thought, and just last year he was the president of the top (and only) ex-gay organization (which ironically has an executive director who's own kid is gay).

These kooks are the leaders of the religious right - they have ties to all the major religious right groups. They are the people who oppose equal civil rights for gays and lesbians. They are the people who now control the Republican party.

Pam has more. Read the rest of this post...

CNN host says lesbians aren't really women

Okay, at what point is CNN going to tell this asshole to knock it off? CNN, you have a bigot as a host. Glenn Beck has attacked Muslims, women, gays, blacks, and now he's yet again going after gays. He just, moments ago, on the air, questioned whether Rosie O'Donnell is really a woman. Actually, he didn't question it at all - he pretty much suggested that she isn't a woman. Rosie is a lesbian and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what he meant - you know, lesbians aren't real women, they're actually men - at least according to CNN.

CNN has hired a bigot as one of their hosts, and they have been informed time and again about the hateful crap this guy is spewing on CNN's dime. It's time the network stopped acting like FOX News. Best Buy, among others, have supported this bigot for too long. Please visit Chris Achorn's blog and help put an end this to ridiculous exercise in hate.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress has the video. It's subtle, but notice how Beck gives the wavy hand sign when he mentions that Rosie is "a woman" - it's the sign you give to mean "more or less" or "not really." Watch it. Read the rest of this post...

OUT Magazine ranks the 50 most powerful gays in America: Anderson is number 2; John is number 19

New York Magazine previewed OUT Magazine's list of "The Power 50: The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America." To be honest, I don't know who some of these people are. But all in all, not bad company for Mr. Aravosis:

1. David Geffen
2. Anderson Cooper
3. Ellen DeGeneres
4. Tim Gill
5. Barney Frank
6. Rosie O’Donnell
7. The New York Times Gay Mafia: Richard Berke, Ben Brantley, Frank Bruni, Stuart Elliot, Adam Nagourney, Stefano Tonchi, and Eric Wilson
8. Marc Jacobs
9. Andrew Tobias
10. Brian Graden
11. Jann Wenner
12. Andrew Sullivan
13. Suze Orman
14. Joe Solmonese
15. Fred Hochberg
16. Christine Quinn
17. Perez Hilton
18. Scott Rudin
19. John Aravosis
20. Sheila Kuehl
21. James B. Stewart
22. Nick Denton
23. Tom Ford
24. Nate Berkus
25. Adam Moss
26. Jim Nelson
27. Lorri L. Jean
28. Adam Rose
29. Annie Leibovitz
30. Simon Halls and Stephen Huvane
31. Bryan Lourd
32. Bryan Singer
33. Jonathan Burnham
34. Brian Swardstrom
35. Robert Greenblatt
36. Chi Chi LaRue
37. Dan Mathews
38. Neil Meron and Craig Zadan
39. Ingrid Sischy
40. Marc Cherry
41. Carolyn Strauss
42. Irshad Manji
43. Jodie Foster
44. Christine Vachon
45. André Leon Talley
46. Hilary Rosen
47. Matthew Marks
48. Benny Medina
49. Mitchell Gold
50. David Kuhn Read the rest of this post...

ABC: US helping fund Taliban drug smuggler who is anti-Iran

Here we go again. We're helping the Taliban, and drug smugglers, because at least they're anti-Iran. Plus ca change... Read the rest of this post...

Gays lecture Family Research Council about lying during Holy Week

Snap, snap! Nothing better than the gays lecturing the family values crowd on what it means to be a good Christian during Holy Week. It certainly doesn't mean violating the Ten Commandments because you're hateful bigots.

From the Human Rights Campaign:

When Homophobes Bear False Witness

Family Research Council lies to members about hate crimes amendment, fails to disclose conflict of interest

WASHINGTON— The Family Research Council bore false witness against its neighbors at least twice this Holy Week when communicating with its members about the need for hate crimes legislation, said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.

In an attempt to scare its members into believing that federal hate crimes laws will punish simple thoughts, the FRC asks in a new Web video (www.stopthoughtcrimes.com), "What will it mean in America if thought crimes laws are passed?" The assertion that America doesn't already have a federal hate crimes law is a flat out lie. The federal hate crimes law (18 U.S.C. section 245), covering race, religion, color and national origin, has been on the books since 1969.

[Here's a screen capture of the Web video]



“It's easy to understand why the Family Research Council would feel the need to lie about the hate crimes law's existence. The existing federal hate crimes law already covers the employees of the FRC under its "religion" provision,” said Solmonese. “That means the FRC is either against granting others the same protections it has already enjoyed for almost forty years under current federal law or it wants to repeal the existing hate crime law. Talk about special rights.”

Just as embarrassing, no critic of the FRC – or anyone else – has ever been thrown in jail for any supposed "thought crime" under the existing federal hate crimes law. The truth is that neither the current hate crimes law nor the expanded measure criminalize thoughts or speech; they onlycover crimes involving bodily injury or attempted bodily injury. The hate crimes statute is only invoked to allow a federal investigation and the prosecution of bias-motivated violence if – and only if – it is necessary to achieve an effective, just result. That only happens after a violent crime is committed, which debunks the "thought crimes" talking point.

As Congress once again attempts to add women, people with disabilities and members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community to the existing federal hate crimes law, the FRC has demonstrated that it is willing to go to any length to stop this needed legislation – including lying. Similar legislation has already passed in recent years in both the Republican-led House and Senate. This year, the House bill, H.R. 1592, and its soon-to-be introduced Senate companion bill, will add gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability to the protected classes under 18 U.S.C, chapter 13, ensuring that the already-existing federal hate crimes law covers everyone.

Read the rest of this post...

Susan Collins stands with George Bush on Iraq (and just about everything else)

Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Have we won yet? Read the rest of this post...

Harry Reid: Bush veto delays funding for the troops

Harry Reid is blunt as usual. If Bush wants the money for his war, he can sign the bill that Congress is sending him. It's not that complicated:

The President today asked the American people to trust him as he continues to follow the same failed strategy that has drawn our troops further into an intractable civil war. The President's policies have failed and his escalation endangers our troops and hurts our national security. Neither our troops nor the American people can afford this strategy any longer.

Democrats will send President Bush a bill that gives our troops the resources they need and a strategy in Iraq worthy of their sacrifices. If the President vetoes this bill he will have delayed funding for troops and kept in place his strategy for failure.

Read the rest of this post...

What makes a civil war

(NOTE FROM JOHN: AJ was recently a Defense Intelligence officer working on the Iraq war.)

With all the commotion over McCain and other deluded/dishonest war cheerleaders claiming that some parts of Iraq are safe or thriving or something other than a collapsed state, it's worth noting, again, that civil war is not characterized by constant all-out fighting but rather by the potential for violence anywhere, anytime, against anyone. Juan Cole explains this well today:

Look, I lived in the midst of a civil war in the late 1970s in Beirut. I know exactly what it looks and smells like. The inexperienced often assume that when a guerrilla war or a civil war is going on, life grinds to a standstill. Not so. People go shopping for food. They drive where they need to go as long as they don't hear that there is a firefight in that area. They go to work if they still have work. Life goes on.

It is just that, unexpectedly, a mortar shell might land near you. Or the person ahead of you in line outside the bakery might fall dead, victim of a sniper's bullet. The bazaars are bustling some days (all the moreso because it is good to stock up on supplies the days when the violence isn't so bad). . . McCain, you see, knows exactly what I know about guerrilla wars and civil wars. Hell, people used to shop freely in Saigon in the early 1970s! And if he is saying what he is saying, it is because he is attempting to convey an overly optimistic picture with which to deceive the American public.

Precisely. Read the rest of this post...

Bush just lied in his press conference about Iraq; said our military commanders came up with the surge, in fact they opposed the surge, all of them

Bush just spoke to the nation, trying to convince the public to support his Iraq quagmire, and he claimed again that the surge, the escalation, was the idea of his commanders in the field, and he's just following their advice.

In fact, all of the Joint Chiefs, the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, ALL opposed the surge.

The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

And our commanders in the field opposed the surge, so Bush fired them and replaced them with someone who would rubber stamp his surge plan.

In devising his new strategy, Bush again turned to the neoconservatives. The so-called surge strategy is the brainchild of Frederick Kagan, a military historian at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute who has never been to Iraq. And once again, President Bush dismissed the views of his military advisers. General George Casey and General John Abizaid, the commanders in the field, doubted that additional troops would make any difference in Iraq. They were replaced by surge advocates, including Lieutenant General David Petraeus, now the top commander in Iraq.

And remember, it was just a few months ago, that the commanders on the ground were SO opposed to the surge that Bush came out and said, for the first time, that he WOULDN'T listen to commanders on the ground anymore.

This all matters because once again Bush is lying to the American people in order to justify yet another failed extreme policy. He has lied about this war from the beginning, and he and his administration have lied about so many issue that it's impossible to trust anything they say. Bush lies. He doesn't trust the American people to know the truth. He doesn't have the courage or maturity to take responsibility for his own actions, so he blames the generals - you see, it's THEIR idea, not his, it's THEIR fault, not his. "Who me?" Bush can't ever be blamed for this infernal mess because he's just a bystander, you understand. Only problem? It's all one big lie.

The man is a ten year old child. It's time to take away the car keys. Read the rest of this post...

Bush refuses to say homosexuality is immoral

So much for the religious right. Bush just demurred when asked about this on TV. Read the rest of this post...

Bush say more troops must die to spare his ego

Bush is staying the course. He just said so on TV. He's going to keep fighting his civil war, keep escalating in the face of disaster, even if every American soldier has to die for his folly. And if you don't want Bush killing all of our soldiers recklessly, killing all of our soldiers simply to spare his own boyish ego, then you're the one who hates the troops, you're the one who's "undercutting the troops." You see, in order to show your support for the troops, you need to kill them. That's how Republicans support the troops, they send our troops to their deaths because they're too embarrassed to call the whole thing off and admit they're wrong. We saw how Bush supports the troops. He let our injured troops sleep in their own urine. He left them unattended while maggots infested their open wounds. That's how Bush supports our troops. He hasn't supported the troops, living or dead, since this war began. It's all about the ego of an under-achieving spoiled brat.

It's time to take away the car keys.

PS He's back to using the word "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" in order to slur Democrats. He said he'd stop, he didn't. What a surprise. We are, after all, dealing with the mind of a ten year old. Read the rest of this post...

"A simple internet search" would have disproved the 16 word claim of Iraq nukes

The Washington Post examines the history of the fake documents that helped lead us in to war. The infamous 16 words about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were easily proved to be false, if anyone in the Bush administration wanted to do that. Just keep this in mind every time Bush talks about the Iraq war because we really can't trust a thing he says:

In February 2002, the CIA received the verbatim text of one of the documents, filled with errors easily identifiable through a simple Internet search, the interviews show. Many low- and mid-level intelligence officials were already skeptical that Iraq was in pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.

Burba, who had no special expertise in Africa or nuclear technology, was able to quickly unravel the fraud. Yet the claims clung to life within the Bush administration for months, eventually finding their way into the State of the Union address.

As a result of the CIA's failure to firmly discredit the document text it received in February 2002, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was called in to investigate the claim. That decision eventually led to the special counsel's investigation that exposed inner workings of the White House and ended with the criminal conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was forced to resign as chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.

But we're supposed to trust Bush now. Sure. Read the rest of this post...

Bush gives speech. Soldiers continue to die.

George Bush is going to get tough with Democrats on Iraq today. CNN is promoting his remarks this morning as "Bush Strikes Back." Bush plays politics while the death toll mounts:

Four U.S. soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq on Monday, the U.S. military said, bringing the U.S. death toll since the invasion to 3,257.

Two U.S. soldiers and a Marine were killed in separate attacks in the volatile western Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

One soldier died and three were wounded when a large truck bomb exploded outside a police station in the disputed northern city of Kirkuk.

This has to stop. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Bush is going to give another angry war speech at 10:10 AM EDT. His target is, of course, Democrats. The guy never had a plan for his war. Now, that he's actually being held accountable, he can't stand it. He's a petulant spoiled brat. Unfortunately, his petulance and obstinacy are causing more death and destruction every day. Bush and Cheney have done enormous damage to America. Hopefully, the Democrats can prevent further destruction.

Okay. What else is new? Read the rest of this post...

McCain impresses the Iraqis during his visit

Winning hearts and minds.

Jaafar Moussa Thamir, a 42-year-old who sells electrical appliances at the Shorja market that the Republican congressmen visited on Sunday, said the delegation greeted some fellow vendors with Arabic phrases but he was not impressed.

"They were just making fun of us and paid this visit just for their own interests," he said. "Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them? This country and its society have been destroyed because of them and I hope that they realized that during this visit."

And another...

"I didn't care about him, I even turned my eyes away," Thamir said. "We are being killed by the dozens everyday because of them. What were they trying to tell us? They are just pretenders."

Karim Abdullah, a 37-year-old textile merchant, said the congressmen were kept under tight security and accompanied by dozens of U.S. troops.

"They were laughing and talking to people as if there was nothing going on in this country or at least they were pretending that they were tourists and were visiting the city's old market and buying souvenirs," he said. "To achieve this, they sealed off the area, put themselves in flak jackets and walked in the middle of tens of armed American soldiers."

Abdullah did at least complement McCain for leaving the Green Zone, unlike the Iraqi government leaders, so while he's a fraud, he's not as much of a fraud as the Iraqi government which should give us great confidence in the future. Read the rest of this post...

UK sailors held by Iran - retaliation for failed US raid in January

Another massive blunder with serious consequences.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.

"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.

Mr Jafari was accompanied by a second, high-ranking Iranian official. "His name was General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Pasdaran [Iranian Revolutionary Guard]," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, now head of the Diwan (office) of President Talabani in Baghdad. Mr Pire previously lived in Arbil, where he headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Mr Talabani's political party.

The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. There is no doubt that Iran believes that Mr Jafari and Mr Frouzanda were targeted by the Americans. Mr Jafari confirmed to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that he was in Arbil at the time of the raid.

Read the rest of this post...