Year: 2005

Some sources are saying so. If that’s true, then it suggests that Romney really is Rove’s pick to prevent a Giuliani or McCain from winning the nomination in 2008.

What on earth is this website doing? U.S. soldiers can post pics of the corpses of Iraqis killed in war on a website devoted mainly to amateur porn. I clicked through and saw just a couple of pics which are beyond appalling and distressing. The section for corpses – and it’s not clear whether they are of insurgents or just civilians – has this introduction:

Pictures in this forum are submitted by U.S. Soldiers from over in Iraq and Afghanistan and will probably be a little gory. So if you get sick easy or have a problem with dead terrorists please don’t look here.

If you send in pics of dead insurgents or Iraqis, you get free access to the porn part of the site. The pics that are appended have names such as “What every Iraqi should look like,” “DIE, HAJI, DIE,” and “Cooked Iraqi.” I would think this violates the Geneva Conventions, not that the U.S. under this president cares about those very much any more. But it’s also beyond depraved. Eric Muller sounded the alarm. Like the pictures from Abu Ghraib, these images are also a propaganda coup for Zarqawi and his monsters – a consequence of war in the Internet age. Have we really sunk to this?

GRACE AND GAYS: An email that speaks to the spiritual distress many of us are in right now:

I’ve been especially torn the last year with what has transpired in the church with regard to gays. I attend mass but can’t bring myself to go to communion. I’m in a small diocese (Helena, Montana) and know the bishop, who was taught by my father, and recently suggested to him that the not so sotto voce message I and many gays are getting is that of all God’s people, gays are one group the Catholic church no longer pretends to want in the fold. His silent stare confirmed that conclusion. While my personal family has always accepted me, I’m still stunned at the feeling of devastation I have experienced as a once beautiful and open church has so dramatically turned, and turned with such force against gays, both in the laity and the clergy.

I studied under a great Belgian Jesuit at the Catholic University of Louvain, Piet Fransen, who took two years to expound upon Grace, “the living, loving presence of God in the world, the church, and us.” I have thought of those days, and the lessons I learned. I have told my gay friends that leaving the Church is for me impossible, for it would be to abandon grace which I have found in every turn of my life, in family, friends, lovers; in the communities I have known, including parishes and dioceses. It was not merely a “church” we are asked to leave, but the belief that we and our lives are part of that loving presence. I’ve come to realize that it is the Church which now has come to declare our lives and our existence as gay Catholics to be grace-free zones. Perhaps that is why my bishop was able to stand quiet, his silence confirming that neither he nor the Church saw anything in our lives worthy of being part of his church.

To feel, as I do, unable to attend communion any more because of the new hierarchy is one thing. The loss is enormous. But to be informed that you are somehow inherently morally sick is quite another.

They’re close to classics in each genre. Email One:

How does it feel to go, in just the few years that I have been reading your blog, from being a patriot and true believer in conservatism as the right path to being simply another mouthpiece for the liberal idiots who are determined to undermine everything that this country was founded upon? To waste so much intelligence is such a disappointment!!

What’s missing from this email is some reference to the fact that the only reason I have issues with intelligence fiascos, bad war management, fiscal insanity, legalized torture, and general incompetence is … gay marriage. But, hey, I’ll get a few dozen of those today as well. Then there are the newer readers:

I never thought that I’d find a conservative website that was anything other than a forum for bashing liberals. I will be bookmarking this so I can return over and over just to see what the sane half of the Republican party is talking about.

Lose some; win some. But thanks to all of you for reading anyway.

BUSTING TIMESSELECT: It was only a matter of time. You can read John Tierney’s column a day later here. Paul Krugman even posts his own a day later. John Tabin has put up a clearing house for everything Pinch wants you to pay for. It’s called “Never Pay Retail.” By the way, MoDo still hasn’t recorded her video-dork spot. Can you blame her?

Two governors; two states affected by Katrina; two very different polling trajectories. Barbour gains 15 percent in approval; Blanco loses 9 points in approval. Her disapproval is now 56 percent. Maybe the voters of those states are telling us something.

TWO KATRINAS REVISITED: I sloppily wrote yesterday that we are paying for two Katrinas a year on interest “on the Bush-Republican deficit.” I should have written on interest “on the national debt inflated by the Bush-Republican deficit.” Bush is not responsible for the entire national debt he inherited, just for about $1.5 trillion that he has added. That $1.5 trillion is, of course, a record amount in a mere five years (not counting the deficits racked up under Reagan). But the interest on that alone isn’t two Katrinas’ worth. My bad. Under Clinton, of course, we were actually paying back the debt. But that was when we had fiscal conservatives running the government.

ROBERTS AND ROE: A social conservative believes the soon-to-be new chief Justice may well vote against Casey and then Roe. For the record, I think Roe was dreadful constitutional law. Abortion should be left to the voters, not the courts. And if that happened, Democrats would gain.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN IRAQ: A sobering discussion.

GAY BLACK COUPLES: In California, more than half of them are raising kids.

“I am from Maine and I just have to say FEMA is so thoughtful to send us some ice. We do love our cocktails up here (G & T with extra lime is my favorite, just in case FEMA people are reading), and what with the high heating oil prices, we are going to need some extra mood enhancement to weather the ballooning fuel bills. Still, it would have been even nicer if they had sent us some extra fuel oil or maybe some wood to burn. But the ice is such an unexpected gift. Does one send a card?”

My friend Jake Tapper gets a blog. He has much more to say than TV news allows, so I doubt it will disappoint.

It begins to make a little more sense. The NYT is in financial trouble. It still seems dumb to me to charge for online content. Isn’t online ad revenue booming for them?

Okay, you sitting down? FEMA is now sending ice to … Maine:

The trucks started arriving this weekend, and they’re expected to keep coming through Sunday.
City officials say they have no idea why the trucks are here, only that the city has been asked to help out with traffic problems. But the truck drivers NEWSCENTER spoke to said they went all the way down to the gulf coast with the ice — stayed for a few days — and then were told by FEMA they needed to drive to Maine to store it.
The truck drivers, who are from all over the country, tell us they were subcontracted by FEMA.

No, this isn’t the Onion. It’s the Bush administration.

The notion that the president’s passive response to Katrina has led to a big drop in support isn’t borne out by the polls, Mark Blumenthal argues. Good news for Bush? Nuh-huh. The worse news is that Bush had slumped before Katrina and his Katrina handling rating is actually better than that for any other policy, including Iraq. The big shift that Katrina has prompted is the response to the question of whether Bush is a “strong and decisive” leader. He has cratered on that question, which was always his strong point. Check this graph out. Ouch.