South Carolina's anti-gay amendment is toast

From the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (they didn't bother putting a hyperlink in their email containing the release, so they don't get a link on my page - perhaps some day our groups will learn Internet 101):

Despite feverish last-minute efforts, the South Carolina state legislature ended its regular session today without approving a proposed state constitutional amendment to prohibit the recognition of same sex marriage and any other form of partner recognition outside of marriage. The measure passed the state House of Representatives on March 17 by 93 to 7, but stalled in the Senate....

The South Carolina gay community united to thwart the proposed amendment, raising a warchest, hiring a well-regarded lobbyist, and mounting a sophisticated constituent pressure campaign focused on the State Senate.

In the closing hours of the session, the House of Representatives repeatedly attached the anti-marriage amendment to several unrelated pieces of legislation in the hopes of forcing a senate vote. These efforts failed for a number of reasons, including a filibuster by one senator objecting to a gubernatorial appointment.

With today's win, South Carolina became the ninth state in which efforts to pass an anti-marriage constitutional amendment have failed in legislatures this year. Other states include Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, and Minnesota. Anti-gay forces have succeeded in placing anti-marriage constitutional amendments on the ballot in six states - Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah. Another seven states are at risk to have an amendment on the ballot.

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Score!!!!!!!!!

Phyllis Schlafly has successfully blamed the Abu Ghraib abuses on women being permitted into the military.

Damn women. First we let them into the military, next thing you know their magic ray guns subconsciously make our male soldiers sic dogs on prisoners who are then made to masturbate, naked, while blindfolded. Drat their maniacal plan for world conquest!

A leading conservative spokeswoman says while the outrage over the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad has centered on the humiliation of the terrorist captives, the reason behind the sexual nature of the alleged abuse has been largely ignored. Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum believes the sexual aspects of the scandal might not have occurred had the U.S. military not involved women. "What we have in the military today is the feminists' attempt to give us a gender-neutral or 'un-gendered' military -- and it's bad news all the way around," she says. "It's humiliating for the world. [Women] should not be in co-ed training, and they should not be in combat." Schlafly hopes more people will ask questions regarding the sexual nature of the alleged abuse and that reflection will lead to addressing what she sees as the overall problem. - AgapePress

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I assume we're responsible for the 800 dead American soldiers too

Religious right's AgapePress:

A conservative media watchdog group says the incessant Bush-bashing by the mainstream media is definitely having an adverse effect on the U.S. president's approval ratings. Tim Graham of the Media Research Center says it is quite evident that the liberal media has been successful in driving down George W. Bush's poll numbers.

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Feldt knocks Kerry, and she's right

Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt:

"I think when a candidate has a set of beliefs, even if a voter doesn't agree with that set of beliefs, they have more respect for a candidate. So I'm hoping that Kerry will learn that as he goes along. He's certainly always been strong in his previous races, so I think he'll come to his senses,'' Feldt said.

Gloria is a client of mine, and I know her personally. She's a good lady, and knows her stuff, and is dead-on with her analysis of, and advice for, Kerry. People can respect you if they disagree with you, but not if they think you're a weasel (see my next post below). Read the rest of this post...

Bush Camp Lashes Out at Kerry's Missing a Vote on Iraq

NYT:

Senator John Kerry avoided a tricky situation on Wednesday when he did not vote on a proposal to add $25 billion for the war in Iraq to a Pentagon measure, but the Bush campaign is not about to let him off the hook.

"John Kerry is giving a speech today on modernizing our military less than 24 hours after he skipped a vote on $25 billion in funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," President Bush's campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, said.

And Racicot would be right. What the hell is Kerry thinking? That no one would notice how wimpy it would look to skip a rather important vote on Iraq, seemingly in an effort to note have to choose sides? Whether or not that was Kerry's intent, it sure looks like it was.

Which begs the larger question of just what is the matter with this guy? Bush is a moron. Arguably the worst president we've ever had - certainly the worst of my generation (perhaps tied with Nixon's scandalous side). And Kerry would obviously be an improvement, yada yada yada. Now that we got that out of the way, why does Kerry insist on doing everything in his power to look weak and weasley? Did he think no one would notice if he didn't vote?

Yes, I'm sure his advisers told him if he did vote he'd have to reconcile a "yes" vote for the $25bn in aid with his opposition to the Bush strategy in Iraq. But you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to explain that you don't simply summarily cut off food and arms to our men and women in Iraq just because you have a problem with the way the president is implementing the policy. Is it that hard to explain?

Geesh. Read the rest of this post...

Alterman: Is Bush an al Qaida Plant?

Is Bush an Al Qaida Plant? I’m not one to jump to conclusions but the circumstantial evidence is hard to ignore. Take a look:

He’s destroying the military, by overstretching its resources and cannabalizing its trainers.
He’s consorting with spies for the Axis of Evil.

He may be revealing the identities of CIA agents (or at least tacitly encouraging those who do).

He’s coddling “terrorists” in Iraq.

He’s pursuing a policy deliberately designed to stir up hatred in the Arab world.

He’s helping bin Laden recruit more terrorists and Al Qaida to fully reconstitute itself.

He’s setting captured terrorists free.

He seems to think up a new reason to fight someone else almost every two weeks. (complete thesis)

He’s sucking up to France.

Oh, and he’s trying to undermine all those silly western freedoms that the Al-Qaida folks find so annoying.
Ten is a nice number, so I’ll stop there, but again, we all know I could go on indefinitely. Read the rest of this post...

Were they lying morons too?

As President Bush begins a week of foreign diplomacy, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice insists that he will one day rank alongside such towering pillars of 20th century statecraft as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. - AP

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Moral rights and wrongs

From a recent comments discussion about right-wingers trying to impeach any judge who doesn't see the world their wacky way....

But when the far left wants to impeach Bush for 'lying' or Rumsfeld for personally abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, you have no problem with that.
Jacob Blue | Email | Homepage | 06.03.04 - 11:37 am | #

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Jacob, what you, and a scary number of people on the right, fail to understand is the nuanced difference between the legitimacy of "a tactic" and "when to use that tactic." For example, you have a gun. You use that gun to shoot the guy trying to rape your wife. That's a good use of a gun. You use that gun to shoot a guy who disagrees with you about Bush's plan for tax cuts. That's a bad use of a gun.

Now to impeachment. You want to impeach a president who lies to the nation in order to get us into a war. That's a valid reason to impeach, whether you agree with the truth of the premise or not. Had a hypothetical president lied to the nation in order to get us into a war, that's fair game for impeachment. Now the second example - you want to impeach a judge simply because his opinion disagrees with yours on abortion, on the civil rights of gay men and lesbians, etc. That's a bad use of impeachment, to simply silence people with whom you disagree.

If there were some rogue judge out running rampant over the law and our constitution, then no one would oppose his impeachment. But the folks crying for the impeachment here are the same folks who want to impeach the Republican majority on the Mass. Supreme Court for being "activist liberals." They're the same people who hoped God would intervene and kill 3 US Supreme Court justices because they overturned state sodomy laws. They're the same folks who call Justice Kennedy a "liberal activist" - even though he's a conservative Reagan appointee - simply because he wrote an opinion saying gay people shouldn't be thrown in jail simply because of who they are.

Once you look at the bigger picture, it's clear where the "activist judge" crowd is coming from, and it sure as hell isn't some well-placed concern about a judge gone crazy. It's a political ploy to stifle any speech in this country (legislative, judicial or otherwise) that doesn't jive with their warped world view.

And that, my friend, is no justification for this use of the word impeachment.
John Aravosis | Email | Homepage | 06.03.04 - 12:14 pm | #

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PS It's no longer just the far left who wants to impeach the president. Some of us hawks, who used to work for Republican Senators, think he's gone too far as well. Read the rest of this post...

Lott says some Abu Ghraib torture victims "should have been killed"

The face of George Bush's Republican party. The man should resign, now.

"Hey, nothing wrong with holding a dog up there, unless the dog ate him, scared him with a dog," Lott said. When WAPT news anchorman Brad McMullan noted that a prisoner died at Abu Ghraib, apparently after a beating, Lott responded, "This is not Sunday school; this is interrogation; this is rough stuff."

Some of the prisoners "should not have been prisoners in the first place, probably should have been killed," he added.

Really? Because Lott knows they were guilty? Funny, because 90% of the folks we were arresting ended up being let go as innocent.

Susan Irby, Lott's communications director, said Lott got an "incredibly positive" response to his remarks.

Yeah, well, the interview was conducted in Mississippi. Not exactly America's most staunch defenders of the Bill of Rights.

Irby defended Lott's remarks about the dogs, saying there has been no conclusive evidence that they attacked anyone.

Right, because, I mean, had there been a photo of a prisoner's leg with a chunk taken out of it by one of those dogs, I mean, that would be another story...
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BREAKING NEWS: CIA Director George Tenet Resigns

I smell a fall-guy here. This way they can make Tenet the bad man who sold the good naive president all the bad information. Read the rest of this post...

Scary shit

Now the far right wants to impeach any judge who doesn't agree with them on any issue. These people want to live in a country where a rubber stamp kangaroo court simply codifies decisions already made by politicians before the case is even heard. Scary shit. Read the rest of this post...

Taking back the House

One of my biggest pet peeves in politics is people who refuse to believe in the possible. The Washington Post reports that Stephanie Herseth's victory in the congressional special election yesterday in South Dakota has now given Democrats hope that perhaps they could even take back the House this year. Up until Herseth's victory, no one even considered that possibility.

Any my big question is: Why not?

If I talk to one more person in DC who on any given day tells me how absolutely positively certain he is that there is no way the Dems can take back the House or Senate, I'm going to scream. Why? Because already in my 15 years in politics I've heard everybody and his brother tell me about "the impossible" that then becomes "possible." To wit:

- When Clinton won in 92, the Republicans all told me that they would never win the White House or Congress again. In 2 years, they had taken back the House and Senate.
- When Democrats lost the House and Senate, I'd asked a very big player in town when he knew there was a possibility of losing each body to the Republicans. He told me they knew one body was in play a few weeks before the election, and the other they only had a clue a day or two before the election. That means that folks were saying as much as two days before the election that there was no chance of the Dems losing control of that body, and they were wrong.

My point is that not only are these pundits often wrong, but their message either dispirits the troops (in the case of convincing them that they can't win the race), or it lulls the troops into a false sense of security, which is dangerous as hell. I find this problem all the time, whether working on gay politics or other political issues. Folks tell you it simply can't be done, and that attitude becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Read the rest of this post...

New documentary to expose right wing campaign against Clinton

It is great to see the left fighting back! Why should we allow the right to dictate beliefs and images as they have done with Clinton and even with the term "liberal"? This could be a long summer for the neocons.

"A film that claims to expose "the 10-year campaign to destroy Bill Clinton" is scheduled for its first public screening June 15 in Little Rock.

The film purports to uncover a right-wing manipulation of the media, which Thomason says began with President Nixon's call to counter liberal messages in the 1970s. Thomason said the impact of Clinton's ties to Hollywood pales in comparison to the reach of conservative radio." - AP

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Consumer confidence in decline

With the buying climate dipping to a 14-month low last week, one has to wonder about the economic recovery that is being reported. I keep hearing about how great the last three quarters have been, I read about great earnings report and all of that, but I also hear a lot of fear out there. What is up with this recovery? Is this another Reagan trickel-down that doesn't really trickle down? Read the rest of this post...

Coalition of the going

The numbers are looking shakey for the conservative government in Portugal. With an election coming soon and almost 74% of the population against keeping troops in Iraq, Portugal might be joining the fast paced Coalition of the Going soon. Read the rest of this post...

Come clean George, the draft is coming

Since budget cuts for next year have already been made public, why not come clean about the draft? If the military is going to such extremes with the "stop-loss" program (shall we just call it "draft light") and revolving troops between home and Iraq and Afghanistan, why can't Bush just be honest about his need for a full scale draft? The numbers can not be sustained and as long as Bush is in office, the Coalition of the Willing is only going to get smaller. Come on George, you are supposed to be a stand up guy. You always talk about making difficult decisions so why not be honest with the American public? If your message is so clear, won't the American public support you? Read the rest of this post...

Saudis crack down on "charities"

Whew! We can all sleep better knowing that the Saudi government has taken swift action to close down "charities" that have been funneling money to terrorist organizations. Wow, they are so impressively quick with taking action, I think that we should all stand in awe of their capabilities to clamp down on these sponsors of terrorism. Who knows, maybe in ten years they will stop Jew-bashing and talking about their hatred of infidels. We are all so lucky to have friends like them on our side. Read the rest of this post...

US and Saudi Arabia, in a state of denial

Friedman makes some excellent points in this article about the current state of denial both in the US and Saudi Arabia. With an education system that promotes blind hatred for Jews and Westerners, it should be no surprise that "outsiders" were singled out last week in the attack in Khobar. Could US policy be a little more balanced in the Middle East? Sure, but you do not see Israelis teaching hatred to their children in school. The blind hatred of Jews and Westerners in the Middle East may have helped local governments maintain power in the short run, but now that it is coming back to haunt them, they better do something quickly. And these are supposed to be our friends?

Meanwhile, the Big Oil crowd in the US continues to live in denial about our dependence on the Middle East, Saudi Arabia in particular, for oil. Weren't we supposed to learn a lesson from the gas crisis in the 70s? I don't know if we would be "a lot less dependent" on oil as Friedman suggests, but we would be further down the line than we are today instead of being back on our knees like we were thirty years ago. Taking a look at our oil relationships in West Africa, we may very well be on our knees in the future because our oil buddies there are doing a fine job of lining their pockets and screwing the local populations. When are we going to learn? Read the rest of this post...